A quick photo-update of the race so far.

At 11pm UK time on Saturday night, Alan sent me this photo and  told me that William was “Really in the grove at around 10:45hrs into the race.”

Alan added that “A little wind has got up but still very good running conditions.”

About the only downside was what Alan described poilitely as “Poor data” as the runners and crews (and of course bloggers…) had no access to chip distances, which meant that other than crew best-estimates there had been no offical updates since the 7hr point. Generally for most runners having “some idea” of how far they’ve gone at a given point is probaly going to be “good enough” but accurate information does become a lot more critical when an athlete is looking at record breaking performances – being half a km up or down on a target pace doesn’t make a huge amount of difference in a race of this length if the alteration in pace only lasts for 30 mins or so, but if the pace is off over say a 12hr period, this can really add up…

At around 8am Alan described the track as being full of “Glamour as well as ultra running” even though there was ” No one the cat walk at 8am but runners on the course” . Alan described the conditiond as being a “Lovely fresh sunny morning”.

The next report from Alan stated that it was ” Just before mid day and its getting very busy.”

This is always a double-edged sword in the Monaco “No Finish Line” event… Naturally, as this event is put on to raise money for charity, everyone wants a good turn out and usually quite literally thousands of people take part during the 8 days of the race, most just coming on to the track for fairly short periods to clock-up one or two laps and thus do their bit to support a very good cause. As well as actual runners, at peak times the course is often flooded with more sedate entrants, some of whom walk their dogs or push prams while doing a mile or so and raising money for charity. The problem with this from the perspective of a competive runner is that it does make it very hard to keep a good pace and aim for a great time when this means doing a constant zig-zag around and between quite literally hundreds of slow moving people. Fortunately this isn’t William’s first time in Monaco (he won the race last year, in the process setting a new track record with a distance of over 1000km) and Alan tells me that at this point William was “Weaving well!” amid the crowds.

After the peak period of the day was over, William got back to what he does best, grinding out a lot of distance…

 

More updates as I have them…