Vermeer was the shortest race of October: two weeks, from the 8th to the 21st, and a single 10 km run. There was no topping up the next day; your place came down to the pace of one run. So Vermeer was decided on two evenings. On 8 October Ilya Kosmach ran 11 km at 3:59, and on 11 October Anna Egorova ran her 10 km at 4:00. After that, neither table changed again.
In total, 54 runners took part, and 49 of them covered the full ten kilometres and earned the Art series medal.
Men: three leaders in one day
Vermeer’s opening day was its busiest. On the morning of 8 October Alexander Kriza ran 13 km at 5:00 and became the first leader. Four hours later Maxim Matskevich replaced him with a clean 10 km at 4:40. In the evening, Kosmach went out.
Kosmach runs in the league’s youngest age group and only joined at the end of September. His usual pace is around 4:24, so at Vermeer he was twenty-five seconds per kilometre quicker. Nobody could match it: his closest rival lost thirty-seven seconds to him on every kilometre. In the same month Kosmach also finished fifth in the 50 km Quasar.
Silver went to Dmitriy Frizen. He ran the next morning, covering almost 12 km at 4:36 and pushing Matskevich down to third. Frizen normally runs at about 5:25, so at Vermeer he was almost fifty seconds per kilometre faster.
Behind the podium, three runners were packed within five seconds. Nick Titov ran his 10 km at 4:44 in his first session back after an illness, captioning it simply “all systems normal”. Georgy Chikov matched that pace over almost sixteen kilometres. Sergey Samsonov was one second further back.
Ilya Pavlov finished tenth at 5:06. His run doubled as a race in which he placed third in his age group.
Women: Egorova on her own
For the first three days the women’s table was led by Natalya Sokol. On opening morning she ran 16 km at 5:17, the longest run of Vermeer. On 11 October Tatiana Gudz matched her pace to the second but finished behind her by a fraction of a second.
Nine hours after Gudz, Egorova went out. She was running her club NovgorodRun’s 10 km time trial and wrote that she had finished second among the women there. In the league, the result was out of reach for everyone else: 4:00, one minute seventeen seconds per kilometre faster than Sokol and Gudz. Over the full distance that is a gap of almost thirteen minutes. Egorova usually runs around 5:50, so here she was almost two minutes per kilometre faster than her normal pace. Her profile shows one overall win and three silvers.
Veronika Rikhter was fourth at 5:45. Ekaterina Gavrilova, who would win Quasar two weeks later, ran 5:52 at Vermeer and finished sixth.
Fifty metres
Five runners went out but did not complete the 10 km. The cruellest case was Marat Kadyrov. On the evening of day one, at almost the same time as Kosmach, he ran 9.95 km at 5:20 and stopped. He was fifty metres short of a medal and never went out for a second attempt.
From the run captions
On the very first day, coach Denis Khlebnikov had the painter in mind, writing that true light falls only on what really matters. He signed off with “Hello, Vermeer!”
The most detailed account came from Sergey Khripkov. He loves the Art series medals because they bring a bit of culture into running, so he signed up for the Dutch painter straight away. His entire preparation came down to two runs with his child and one run to measure the loop. On the first lap he was hit by gloom at the thought that it was only halfway. Then the music changed, the second half went better, he even picked up the pace at nine kilometres, and the moment his watch buzzed for ten he stopped it.
Olga ran 15 km into a strong wind at +10 °C with a sore foot. The race itself, the beautiful medal and her music kept her going. Artur Timerbulatov ran along a dark village road, afraid that a bear would jump out of the darkness; a head torch and loud music got him through. Dmitriy Timofeev completed his 10 km on the last evening on a treadmill and was delighted to find it running like magic after a service. Alexey Elizarov, who joined the league a week before the start, kept it short after finishing: “I did it!”
What’s next
Vermeer closed on 21 October, with medals for 33 men and 16 women. Egorova carried straight on: in November’s Sparta she opened with a run at 4:49 and became the biggest threat to the women’s leader. It looks as if October is when she found her best form.
