Day 40 of Season 262 falls on 9 May — Victory Day — and the field runs with it. Twenty-three verified runs produce 250.3 km across five formats, and the day’s session notes contain more holiday greetings than any previous day in the season. Tomorrow is the last day for Mistake and Historic 1945. Francisco Goya, the season’s new 25 km multi-run race, receives its first two sessions today.
Nikolay Simon makes the day’s most consequential race move: 26.2 km in Mistake on the penultimate day of the race’s 30-day window. Simon entered the day at 53% (26.3 km) — well short of the 50 km corridor, with one day remaining after this. The 26.2 km brings him to 52.5 km (105%), clearing the 50 km target in a single session. It is the largest Mistake session in the season not counted among the early high-volume days, and it resolves what had been one of the race’s most visible open positions.
Zhargal Bazarov runs 26.1 km in Nairobi and notes: “Happy Victory Day! The apple trees are blooming!” The volume is significant — matching Simon’s Mistake session to within 100 metres — but the tone is celebratory rather than strategic. Aleksey Prieshkin adds 22.0 km in the same race with “Greetings! Happy great Victory Day!” — two of the largest Nairobi sessions of the day both carrying the holiday. Vyacheslav Krymskiy logs 10.8 km annotated simply as “festive run.”
Aleksey Homyakov opens Francisco Goya with 9.8 km and the note “Happy Victory Day! Happy Holiday! May, Peace, Running!” — the seasonal equivalent of a victory lap after closing Mistake two days prior. Francisco Goya is the race’s newest active format: a 25 km multi-run target, open through 22 May. With 9.8 km in a single session, Homyakov establishes himself at 39% of the target on the race’s second active day.
The day’s most evocative sessions are the smallest. Tatyana Vlasova logs 9.0 km in Historic 1945 with the note: “5-Vёrst run, location: Yelagin Island, St. Petersburg.” Svetlana Volozhanina logs 5.0 km in Nairobi: “5-Vёrst, Novosibirsk, Mikhaylovskaya embankment. Happy Victory Day!” Both athletes are running the 5-Vёrst parkrun format — a 5 km timed run common across Russian cities — on Victory Day, posting their results to the virtual race. The geographical distance between the two sessions (Yelagin Island in St. Petersburg; the Ob river embankment in Novosibirsk) is a small illustration of the field’s actual spread.
Streets absorbs 23.1 km in three sessions, led by Aleksandr Rahmetov at 11.3 km. Historic 1945 receives three sessions — Lazutina 9.1 km, Gavrilova 9.0 km, and Kota’s 9.0 km — bringing further athletes to or past the 9 km minimum target with one day remaining. The window closes tomorrow; whatever volume arrives on 10 May will complete the race’s final picture.
Day 40 at 250.3 km is the highest single-day total in four days, and the session log reads like a cross-section of how a distributed field marks a shared holiday. Simon’s race decision is the one with lasting consequence; the rest of the day belongs to the occasion.
