Across the Years News

Dave here again. Day 2 of Across The Years started a little less than two hours ago. After RD Paul Bonnett's pre-race meeting, the second set of 24 and 48-hour runners took to the track right at 9:00, after the first set of 24-hour runners finished. It was kind of odd for a few minutes, looking at the scoreboard and seeing lap totals like "295 laps" next to "2 laps", and watching the different speeds of the runners, some fresh and some having just passed 24 hours of their 48 or 72-hour journeys. Last night took a toll on everybody, as temperatures were unseasonably cold here (certainly somewhere in the 30s), with a bit of wind from time to time. Performances of note included 24-hour runner Dave Putney, whose 131+ miles led all runners for the first day. Tony Mangan was closing fast, though, passing 24 hours about 3 laps behind Dave, but doing the 72-hour. John Geesler and Tracy Thomas also did well with more than 100 in the 72-hour, and both look strong right now. Carrie Sauter missed 100 in 24:00, but passed that under 25 hours. Don Lundell, June Gessner, Matt Watts and Jenny Hoffman rounded out the first-day 24-hour finishers over 100 miles, but I expect several people to join them on day 2 or 3. One to look for on Monday is Paul DeWitt, who wants to shoot for 165 miles+ to break the American record.

Today looks to be good, with temperatures supposed to rise a bit, though the wind has also picked up. Hopefully most of the technical issues that plagued us yesterday and caused a lot of interruptions with our sending lap totals to the net are over (keep your fingers crossed!) Back with more in a few hours.