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Welcome!

In commemoration of Rochester Institute of Technology's 175th Anniversary, a group of runners from the University will be running across the country beginning November 17th. Quite literally, the runners will cross the continent, beginning at the Pacific Ocean just north of San Diego, and traveling through Phoenix, Albuquerque, Amarillo, St. Louis, Cincinatti, and Washington, DC, before finishing at the Chesepeake Bay outside of Annapolis.

To accomplish such a feat, each runner on the team will run two miles at a time, then rest for 3 hours 30 minutes, to cover the 2,730 mile distance. The team expects to improve the record set by the 1979 cross country team, who ran a similar distance in 14 days, 4 hours, and 8 minutes.

The non-stop relay will take the runners from Sea level in California, to over 6000 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Arizona. Such a daunting task will require training, dedication, and nutrition. Some of the numbers behind the relay:

* Each runner runs two miles at a time
* The runners will average 14 minutes for their two mile segment
* Rest time between runs is about 3 1/2 hours
* Each runner will complete about 6 runs per day and 12 miles per day
* The distance for each runner is 85 miles per week, or 170 total for the trip
* The team will travel through 13 states and the District of Columbia
* The runners will sleep in two RV's that follow the team, at about 9 mph.

For further information, select the appropriate option to the left.

BamZipPow wrote:

I wonder if they will national sports coverage...

At least they have a running clock...

BamZipPow wrote:

RIT Coast to Coast team has completed the run in:

12 days 3 hours 48 minutes

At least they broke the record...

John Tomac wrote:

ITHACA -- In 1979, a group of runners, alumni and students from the Rochester Institute of Technology set out on a transcontinental relay run from Santa Monica, Calif., to Annapolis, Md., to celebrate the school's 150th anniversary. They completed the trek in 14 days, four hours and eight minutes. The group's efforts landed them in the Guinness book of world records.

Twenty-five years later, another group of students and alumni from RIT set out on a similar adventure, with the goal of besting the mark set by the team that had gone a quarter century earlier. I had the privilege of participating in this run.
...
We finished our run in 12 days, three hours and 48 minutes, shaving two days off the mark of the team that went a quarter century before. At the beginning of the run, our goal was to beat that mark.

However, during the course of the run that goal seemed to lose some of it's importance, especially once we realized that we were way ahead of their pace halfway home. The goal simply became finishing the run. It's amazing how 17 individuals can come together and put that goal above all else.

People don't generally think of running as a team sport. This was only possible because a group of runners came together as a team in the face of a challenge unlike any they had experienced. In the end, that helped make the actual running the easy part of the trip.

John Tomac is the graphics artist at The Ithaca Journal. He graduated from RIT in 2003.