Loop 15: past 100 km, and one left standing

Loop 15 is in: bibs 11 and 18 came back inside the hour, and fifteen yards is 100.6 km, or 62.5 miles. That is past the 100 km mark.

Bib 11 was logged at 50:32, with 9 min 28 sec to spare, and bib 18 at 50:33. Bib 17 left the race midway through loop 15 and finishes on 14 yards. Bib 11, Dr Ronak, came back from loop 15 and then quit the race, finishing on 15 yards. That makes 45 out so far.

One runner is left: bib 18, Meghraj Sharma, who has gone out alone for loop 16 with 15 yards behind him. Bib 11 stopped on 15, so to win he has to complete loop 16, one yard more.

What the splits say. Bib 11 gave back 3 min 24 sec on loop 14, and 50:32 is his second-slowest loop of the race after his 51:03 opener. He ran 11 hours 46 minutes of the 15, averaging 47:04 a loop, about 13 minutes of rest an hour. His last five averaged 47:56 against 47:35 for his first five, so the gap to bib 18 had been closing. Bib 18’s last five average 50:30 against 52:06 for his first five, and he has run 12 hours 51 minutes, about an hour more than bib 11. Bib 17, quickest of the three in loop 1 at 45:13, had just finished loop 14 in 50:33, 3 min 34 sec quicker than loop 13, when he left the race.

The context. This is a last-one-standing race with no finish line: it ends when one runner is left, and the winner has to complete one more yard than the last runner to stop. The Ahmedabad chapter record is 18 yards, set by Amit Bhattacharjee in 2025, so bib 18 is 3 yards short of it. Yard 24 is 100 miles, 9 yards away. The best of this season so far is 25 yards, at Pune. Together the whole field has run 352 yards, 2,361 km.