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At half way

The competition at the Big Red Sky Transaustralia Foot race has today reached the half way point and that fact has cheered up the competitors as well as the organisors. Some of the most experienced runners, Dusan Mravlje had the leading role, have yesterday raised a few issues about the race and suggested adjusting the stages to the to their originally planned lengths. '' 85 km long stages are in this heat simply too muck for us. We can't find the time to rest and prepeare ourselves for the next day. I think that especially the Germans, who spend half the stage walking, will soon run out of energy. Although the rooms in the motels have air conditioning, they stay too hot even at night. I don't even want to think about the competitors that sleep in tents,'' pointed out Dusan Mravlje.

These issues have forced Bernie Farmer, the director of the competition, to fulfil the competitors' wishes and shorten the lenght of today's stage by 15 km. Even tomorrow's stage, which is supposed to be 87 km long, will be shorter. They have all agreed to spend the night a few kilometors closer or further to the place they originally planned to stay at. It was mighty hot today again, with the temperatures reaching up to 42 degees Celsius before noon, and without even the slightest breeze, the competitors were soaking wet.

Anatolij Kruglikov has proved that his yesterday's performance was merely a result of a bad day's form. Today he led the race from start to finish again. His advantage was increasing from kilometer to kilometer and since the organisors have announced to adapt the length of the stages so that none of them will be longer than 80 km, it seems that his dominatino will go on. Derxen in Mravlje ran a 40 km distance 500 m apart, and at the finish line the small Russian said: ''My competitor is no longer Kruglikov, but the sun and the heat. It's extremely hot!''

Dusan Mravlje was satisfied with third place, especially when he found out that Sakurai wasn't able to close up the gap between them. At the 50 km mark the Japaneese trailed by exactly 16 minutes and by the end of the stage he managed to close the gap by only 2 minutes and 47 seconds. The rest of the competitors are running up to their capabilities, the 'german train' now regularly splits somewhere at the half way of the stage and each of the racers continues with his own pace. The second oldest runner, 61 year old Helmut Schieke, was suffering the most because of the heat so that he was trailing even before the half way of the stage. ''The weather is simply too hot and I have to watch out because I have a long day ahead of me.'' The small towns in the middle of the Erye peninsula are known for their high average summer temperatures which can exceed 40 degrees Celsius. Luckily tomorrow's forecast promises cloudy skies which could certainly help the racers cross the finish line!

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