A little bit about race coverage…
Just a quick couple of notes on the reporting of the Athens 1000 mile World Cup race here on the blog.
Posts
As the race is going to be taking place over a very extended period I will update the blog with times and distances periodically (a few times per day) but, unlike a 24hr race, I won’t be giving regular hourly updates – at least until the point at which either the end of the race or the 1000 mile mark is coming in sight.
William’s blog is read by a fair mixture of people but typically the readership can be divided on the one hand into runners / fans of ultra-running and on the other hand into non-runners (folks from Orkney, friends, family etc). I’ll be doing my best to cater for everyone’s interest and therefore I’ll try neither to make posts too long and technical nor too short and general in nature but no doubt, as the saying goes, you can’t please everyone all the time.
Distance & Measurement
Most runners are used to dealing with distances measured in kilometres (as this tends to be the international standard) but in general most people in the UK are more used to the use of miles (and this is a 1000 mile race). Wherever possible I’ll give distances in both metric and imperial measurements.
The 1000 mile World Cup lasts a maximum of 16 days – or to put it another way, 384 hours. While it may at first glance seem simplest to give race-times as “day one”, “day seven” etc, this would actually be likely to be a little confusing as the race doesn’t start at midnight but rather 2pm Greek time (and so the 2nd day of the race will start within the first 24hrs of running – if you see what I mean…). Greece is currently 2hrs ahead of us in the UK – but to further complicate things in the UK we will be switching to British Summer Time (on the 28th March) i.e. while the race is still on. For these reasons I’ll be giving the race-times as “number of hours since the start of the race” and/or “number of hours left to run”. I hope this should make following the race as easy as possible, but if this doesn’t prove to be the case, please let me know.
The Runners
There are only 24 runners entered in what is going to be a very long race in terms of both time and distance, so hopefully during the up-to-sixteen days of the event I will be posting brief profiles of all the competitors (or at least as many as possible, where I have information available). If I make any mistakes or if there are omissions with this I would very much welcome anyone with better data to let me know the details.
During the race we will mainly be focussing on William’s own performance and also those of whichever runners are currently holding the top positions in both the men’s and women’s races (the positions will almost certainly change quite a few times during the race – 1000 miles is a very long way to run and competitors will be coming on and off track periodically throughout the event).
I will be using a number of sources for in-race information, including the official race website here as well as photos and reports via email & text (etc) from Alan and Tim at the race itself, plus anything else I can get my hands on. I will very much be relying on Alan and Tim (and others) to contact me as and when possible (in-between crewing for William) and so I definitely cannot guarantee being able to get hold of any information not already posted on the blog, but if anyone is looking for other specific information on William or any of the other runners you are welcome to ask and I’ll do my best (but with no promises!). Likewise, if anyone has any other information concerning the race, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
Sending messages to William
At this point I am unsure whether the race organisers will be offering to forward any messages to runners (e.g. via email) – Ill let you know if this becomes possible. In the meantime anyone wishing to send a message to William can either tweet him via twitter, or if you leave your message as a comment on the blog I will email this to Alan to pass on.
Comments on Blog posts
We very much welcome comments on any blog posts from anyone interested. Comments are moderated (which means they have to be approved before being shown – basically to cut out spam etc) so please bear with me if your comment doesn’t show up straight away (I do sleep occasionally, and now and again I keep trying to remind myself there is a life away from the computer…) – however, any genuine/constructive comments will be approved ASAP.
Allowing for the whims of technology the blog should be quite busy for the next couple of weeks – check back soon!
All the best
Shaun