hour 5 behind them,
the 34 are out on number 6.

this makes 25 miles.
more or less the last of the preliminaries.
as the marathon distance is barely a beginning at bigs.

here in camp we are getting a feel for how the runners are approaching their race.
a lot of the strongest contenders are running near the back of the pack.
not a surprise.

data people being data people,
lots has been done with the backyards in terms of timing,
in reality,
everyone is tied for first every hour.
this is frustrating for timing/data people
who feel that some sort of order must be maintained.
we need that list of people still in the race in some sort of placements.
a favorite seems to be total elapsed time running,
the person who has the least amount of elapsed time running
must be the leader, right?

the timers are happy.
their need for order is satisfied…

the standings they produce are less than meaningless.

i saw that method in use at a backyard i was following in the internet.
i didnt know very many of the runners,
but i did see the name of a very good backyarder
and he was supposedly in 75th place out of 77 at the end f the hour in question.

and he never really moved up.
he was second or third from the bottom hour after hour,
until it got down to 5 runners.
then he was in last the rest of the way,

do you know what they call the runner with the highest elapsed time running when only one is left?

so read those stats (i am sure our data guys are producing them, because they are good) for amusement only.
the real race is in the various strategies that are unfolding out here in the big back yard.
if i rated runners by anything,
it would be their efficiency during the interloopal time they have.

i see some of the runners have tweaked their approaches a little.
it is going to be interesting to see how that works out for them.