One more full week plus a few bonus days, @Challengers! We’re now up to 47 finishers out of 157, but we have another 36 people with just one or two courses left. Congratulations to this week’s finishers: Patrick Milano, Inger Aaberg, Heather Cobb, Anne Shakespeare, Nick Andrews, Scott Nissenson, Sarah Woodyear, Bella Burda, Adrian Kresock, and Joel Kresock. There are some special ones in there. Inger did indeed sign up purely to run the full FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge, becoming just the second person to complete it this year. And the five-year-old twins Adrian and Joel, our youngest finishers, ran their third and final course—a Sweet 1600—on a cruise ship track in Alaska.
Sarah Woodyear’s final Abbott Ascent was an impressive effort too, almost three minutes faster than the previous lead, but it lasted only a day before Chris Petroff took the lead back. It also catapulted Sarah into first place for both Most Points and Age Grade. Bella Burda ran a blazingly fast 5:15 Sweet 1600 for her final course, and even though it took 10 points away from Sarah’s second-place effort, Sarah remains in the lead by 22 points, with Nora McIver-Sheridan back in third. On the men’s side, Gus Pendleton has moved into third with one course left to run, so he’ll be in the running for a podium spot.
Like Inger, Chris Petroff signed up only last week and promptly ran the FLRC Tough Tarmac Challenge in a speedy 3:02:13, about 82 minutes faster than the next fastest effort. However, his total time snuck under the 12-hour limit by just 19 minutes because Chris cleverly split them across two days so he could get some sleep and also biked between the courses. It doesn’t look like he’s trying that with the Tough Trail Challenge; those courses are far more geographically separated. Chris wasn’t even the only person to complete the Tough Tarmac Challenge last week because Daniela Graffeo and Evelyn Goldwasser, who have been running all the courses together, completed it the day before Chris. Amazing running, everyone!
Putting together four Ultra Challenge completions with all the extra miles people are running as the September 1 (at midnight) deadline approaches resulted in our biggest mileage week so far: over 1,000 miles. We’re also over 2,000 runs total and will undoubtedly cross 10,000 miles tomorrow. Great work—let’s see if we can get to 11,000!
Photos of the week go to Pete Kresock, not just for the one of his boys above, but for this shot of Skagway, Alaska at his back.
And to Gill Haines-Sharp, who took this picture of the view from Triple Hump—she has now run all the Challenge course an incredible seven times!
There’s no Challenge group run this weekend because of the Monster Marathon race, but mark your calendars for Saturday, August 30, when we’ll be repeating the Fall Creek Trails group run that launched the Challenge in April. This time, however, we’ll be moving on to Jamie and Caitlin Loehr’s nearby house for a post-run brunch to celebrate the end of the Challenge (while still leaving two day for those last couple of courses).
Let’s cover the rest of the ground!