Scary Run ended on Halloween night. Nine days, from 23 to 31 October, one 15 km run, places decided by pace. Every runner had something to be wary of: the wind, the dark, the indoor track, a first-ever 15K. But the scariest thing in the race was a result. On the very first evening Bulat Ganiev ran at 4:17, and for the next seven days that time loomed over the standings with nobody able to get near it. Then Alexey Tsvetkov did: on 30 October, the day before Halloween, he went out and took first place.
In total, 31 runners went out and 29 completed the fifteen kilometres.
Men: a strike on the eve of Halloween
The first day was the busiest, with the lead changing hands three times. Early in the morning Alexander Kriza ran 16 km at 5:00. Three hours later ANTON KARPOV replaced him with 4:35, exactly his usual pace. Maxim Matskevich and his 4:49 fell short of the top spot. In the evening, Ganiev went out.
Ganiev normally runs at around 5:04, but here he covered 16 km forty-seven seconds per kilometre faster. He beat Karpov by eighteen seconds per kilometre. After that, the table barely moved for almost a week: runners went out every day, but none came anywhere near 4:17.
Tsvetkov waited until the penultimate day. He has seven completed league races and two wins, and a usual pace of around 5:18; on those numbers he did not look like a threat. At Scary Run he found a whole minute per kilometre and ran fifteen kilometres at the same rounded pace as Ganiev. The difference between them was less than a second per kilometre. Over the full distance that adds up to a few seconds, and it was enough to give Tsvetkov the win. Ganiev finished second, Karpov third.
Behind them came a tight group: Matskevich, Kriza, Maxim Gavrilov, who ran almost 23 km at 5:00, Denis Doronin and Vladimir Ar, all between 4:49 and 5:02. Vladimir finished on the morning of the last day and captioned his run: “When just running gets boring”.
Women: Gudz survives October
The women’s table changed leaders. On 24 October Natalya Papina was first to complete the 15K, at 6:22. On the morning of 27 October Tatiana Gudz went out and ran fifteen kilometres at 4:55. Nobody came within forty seconds per kilometre of her for the rest of the race.
Twice in October, first place had been snatched from Gudz at the last moment. At Vermeer she matched Sokol’s pace, lost to her by a fraction of a second and finished third. At Quasar she led for three weeks until Gavrilova overtook her two days before the end. At Scary Run Gudz left her rivals no chance: she usually runs at around 5:28, and here she was more than half a minute faster. Of all of October’s leading women, she was the one who made it to the end of the month with a win.
Second place went to Veronika Rikhter at 5:33. Ekaterina Gavrilova, the Quasar winner, ran on the final day and finished fourth.
What the runners feared
The runners took the race’s name seriously, and each found a horror of their own.
For coach Denis Khlebnikov, it was Khimki. On opening day he ran his 15K into the wind, through a maze of side streets, past people and dogs, and confirmed that the race really was scary. He still signed off by wishing everyone a good running weekend. Pavel Katyukhin played it safe by running in daylight and reported that it was not scary at all in the daytime. Ilya Pavlov chose the most monotonous ordeal: sixty-six laps of an indoor track. He admitted it was not much fun. Artur Timerbulatov headed into the Isheevo caves and ran almost 24 km there, the longest distance of the race.
For many, the distance itself was the scariest part. Andrey Fomenko completed his first-ever 15K on day one with a short caption: “My first 15”. Maxim Sviridov took the pressure off in advance with a four-line rhyme about splashing through leaves and puddles with no need for a record. Olga ran under falling leaves, wondered why anyone bothers rushing about, then remembered that a very unusual medal was waiting for her at the finish.
Two runners dropped out. Anna Brodskaya ran a recovery 10 km, and Alexey Inkin also stopped at ten kilometres. Neither made a second attempt.
What’s next
The last to finish was Dmitriy Timofeev, late on the evening of 31 October, right on Halloween. It was his first-ever 15K. He wrote that it had been great, but he didn’t want to do it again, at least not yet.
In total, 21 men and 8 women finished. Sparta started the next day, and Gudz is once again in the fight for first place. As for Ganiev, he will be dreaming for a long time about the second per kilometre he was missing.
