The Long Quali

Today is the long quali down south of Kiev. The weather, thank goodness, is a little cooler than it was yesterday (at the moment), but the weather forecast says it will increase to about 30 / 31 degrees by midday. So it's going to be hot again.

We have the usual mix of Metro stations, buses and walking to get to the start area, including a 35 minute Metro ride with 1 change, followed by a 35 min bus drive to the start "drop off" point, followed by a 5 min small transport drive (or 15 min) walk to the start check in. The athletes need to be there, and checked in by at least 9:15, so it was early breakfast and the hotel is empty now.

Our first starter this morning is Pierre "Flying bushman" Kaltenbacher at 9:33. He will be the second runner to go out on his course, and we wish him a great deal of luck and a clean run. Provided it all goes according to plan and he has a clean run, he is unlikely to see too many people in the forest and we are likely to see him back in the start area at around 10:43 plus minus.

Markus "Mr. Relaxed" Lang goes into the forest at 9:57, with quite a few hotties around him, so good luck to him as well. We are hoping to see him at the finish area just after 11:oo.

Felix "Looking good" Breitschädel goes at 10:27, exactly 30 minutes after Markus, and just 2 minutes ahead of the Ukrainians favourite son Yuri Omelchenko. We expect him back in the finish after about 65 minutes.

The courses are fairly short today, being only 8km long, but there is quite a lot of climb of 360 HM to be added to those KM's. Add that to that the heat, and you can see why the winning time is expected to be 60 minutes. Also there will only be 17 controls on each course, which will certainly provide for some really interesting route choice.

Our chances of qualifying are good, but probably not quite as good as they were yesterday in the sprint. However I'm confident that the guys will give it there best shot and we should get at least one, if not 2 into the final for next week.

Greetings from Kiev,
Richard.

P.S: You can follow the results live on the link on the left. Apparently they are excellent, with live streaming and really quick up-to-date.