WOC starts tomorrow!

The team is in Italy doing their final preparations -- easy map runs, taper workouts, and topping off their glycogen tanks with a taste of gelato.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for the athletes running the sprint events as the qualification race is in the morning and the final in the afternoon -- on two different islands! Runners will be transported from the pre-quarantine area to Burano by boat. There they will race the qual and then be transported to Venice for the final, again by boat.

Sprint locations, from WOC2014.info website.

The forecast for tomorrow promises warm sun in the morning and cloud cover in the afternoon, which may help athletes from colder climates who won't be used to the higher humidity! (The afternoon dew point is forecasted to be a sticky 20°C.)

Meteogram for Venice from Yr.no

The qual starts at 9:00CET (that's 3:00am for east coasters) and the final at 15:20CET (a more manageable 9:20am). It will be possible to follow the GPS tracking live during the event through the LiveCenter (ticket required!). It sounds like there will also be arena audio and/or video! We'll link to startlists once they are published later today.

For those of you at home the best way to cheer on Team USA is to leave supportive comments here and to get together with a bunch of friends for a watching party. Host of the biggest US watching party over the WOC week (pics or it didn't happen) gets a special prize!