JWOC 2017 Finland - Day 6 and 7

The team has had a busy few days! Andries finished writing exams on Friday so he and his family have now joined us in Finland. On Saturday afternoon we took him out to a middle relevant training area. He coped very well considering he was half asleep when we picked him up. The mosquitoes were very annoying again and despite large amounts of repellent we all got a few new bites. Sarah was especially grumpy as one got her on her forehead.  We then headed back to the Swart's place for dinner which was amazing (we didn't eat pasta!) followed by a few games of Uno and hot chocolate. We had an early night in anticipation for a busy Sunday.

This morning we moved out of our little chalet. The nice people at reception didn't make us pay for the lost knife and returned Sarah's passport - Phew! We moved into our rooms at the Murika institute and completed our accreditation. There was great excitement as we were reunited with friends from all over the world. There wasn't too much time to catch up though as we needed to get to the middle model. The map was more runnable than expected so that's good news! The forest was very busy with many other teams checking out the terrain for the final time. We then had lunch before heading off to the opening ceremony at an amusement park. After the opening we went to the sprint model, then back to our accommodation for the technical model where we tried out the touch free punching which will be used in the Sprint. It was then time for dinner and Sarah and Andries Senior went to the team officials meeting which was followed by a team meeting.

Start times are as follows:
Andries: 9:13 --> 8:13 in SA
Christie: 10:05 -->9:05 in SA
Carl: 10:09 --> 9:09 in SA

The format for the middle quali is slightly different this year. We know who is in which heat and therefore instead of starting 3 women together and then 3 men a minute later, they are starting a man and a women together every minute. This means that there is a 3 minute gap between people in the same quali. As usual the top 20 in each quali will run in the A final on Tuesday, the next 20 in the B final and the remaining athletes will race in the C final.

All athletes will have GPS units so be sure to sure to check out the live tracking on the JWOC website. Happy tracking and thank you to all our fans for the support so far!