06 May 2006

One day to go to the European Champs


The opening ceremony and opening races of the European Championships are tomorrow, and all the teams today took a look at the model areas. These are the final preparation for the competition, allowing the athletes a final training session using the most relevant areas and the most up to date (and similar to the race) maps.

This morning we went to the middle model area, a mixed forest with lots of blocks of woodland with variable runnability separated by marshes, open areas and tracks. This afternoon was the sprint model, with mostly open parkland and white woodland on the edge of the town Ottepaa.

Tomorrow sees the sprint race qualifier in the morning, held in and around Ottepaa, and the sprint race final in the afternoon, which is being held in a park in the centre of Tartu (the largest town in this part of Estonia).

The qualifier race will see 3 heats of men and 3 heats of women, and the best 17 from each heat will go through to the A final in the afternoon (and then the next runners to the B final if they chose to run). The top 40 in the final will score World Cup points.

Start lists are up here for the men and here for the women

Oli Johnson and Claire Ward will not start the races tomorrow. Oli is resting for the middle and Claire is looking after a possible injury and doesn't want to race on a hard surface at this time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dave sit down and have an ice cream!

Good luck to everyone tommorow!!