1945 belongs to the Historic series—the line in the season that marks years worth remembering. The number points to a real threshold: a year that closed one era and opened another. The race does not ask anything about history. It takes the year as a name, places it in May, and gives it nine kilometres.
This virtual running competition is the shortest fixed distance in the season. Two classics appear in Season 262—1945 in May and Thirteen in June. Both sit inside months already loaded with longer formats. Both ask for a single clean run.
Classic format
The mechanic is simple: one submission, 9 km, verified within the window. The window runs UTC, from 00:00 on 1 May through 23:59 on 10 May.
No accumulation. No recovery attempt if a session fails verification. The result is whatever the single run delivers.
That constraint is the whole challenge. The Classic format does not spread risk across sessions—it concentrates it in one outing. A good day produces a result. A bad day, or a missed window, produces nothing.
What May looks like around it
The ten-day window does not exist in isolation. Streets is open for all of May. Goya is running from 8 May. .execution, which started 25 April, still has weeks remaining on the Pace Ladder. Solstice opens 20 May.
Inside that load, 1945 presents the lowest entry cost on the calendar. Nine kilometres is an hour of work for most entrants. The distance is not the problem.
The problem is placing that hour well. A run that lands inside the window and survives verification is enough. A run that overreaches on pace mid-week in a dense May schedule is a different risk than the race itself.
Ten days
Ten days is more window than it might seem. It creates genuine choice about when to go: early in the window, when the legs are fresher but the month is young; or later, when the timing is better known but the window is shorter.
Neither is categorically easier. Entering early removes a variable. Leaving it late adds one.
Verification as part of the task
A completed run is not automatically a valid submission. The activity must be logged, published to the race, and cleared by the verification process. That layer sits beneath the run itself.
In this online competition, what counts is what clears—not what was physically covered. A session that ran the distance but missed the submission step does not appear in the standings.
What the result means
One verified 9 km in the Classic line is in the record regardless of what else ran alongside it that day or that week. A result here counts in full against anyone who did not race.
1945 and Thirteen are the only short classics in Season 262. Both carry the same logic: enter, run once, clear verification. The distance is small; the gap between a result and no result is absolute.
After 10 May
The live phase closes at 23:59 UTC on 10 May. Results then pass through review—provisional positions can move until the race reaches Results out. The outcome of the virtual run is not final until verification clears the field.
The locked standings at Results out are the only ones that count.
