Season 262 is still early, but the first week has already drawn a line between those who are on the board and those who are not. Around thirty athletes have logged roughly 460 km of verified work so far — not a large total, but enough to show who has started committing to proof and where that effort is going. With multiple April formats live, the question is already not how much is being run, but where it is being placed.
The split on 5 April makes that allocation visible. A sample of thirty-seven verified runs from twelve athletes produced about 364 km in a single day. Thirty-three of those runs were published to Barrel 100, while only four went into Nairobi. That ratio is structural, not stylistic: Barrel carries an April deadline, Nairobi runs on a three-month clock. Early in the season, shorter windows pull more volume.
The distribution also shows up at the session level. Andrey Pozdnyakov logged a single run of around 26 km on Barrel. Several others — Andrey Izmaylov, Elizaveta Troshkova, Zhargal Bazarov, Vladislav Kokorin — clustered near 20 km. These are not marginal additions; they move the hundred quickly. They also spend recovery that cannot be reused later in the same week without cost.
That is where the tension sits. Banking distance into Barrel 100 builds position against a fixed April ceiling, but it front-loads fatigue into a calendar that is only getting denser. Nairobi remains open and can absorb volume later, but every week not used is distance someone else can still add.
For now, the pattern is clear. Volume is concentrating where deadlines are closest. The open race is still moving, but at a lower cadence. That balance will shift — but in week one, it explains both where the kilometres went and what they already cost.
