National team mass qualifies in second physical testrun

Under perfect weather conditions tonight in Brussels, a lot of runners in the national team managed to run the physical testrun in a time that was faster than the limit.

During the first run in March, there were already 8 male and 2 female athletes faster than the limit of 45 minutes.

Today, we can add two more men and four more women. Thomas van der Kleij and Wannes Hendrickx ran around 44:30 today, arriving at the same time as Saartje Sallaerts, Greet Oeyen, Els Talloen and Vinciane Mulpas.

Today also proved the spirit of the team. Almost all the aforementioned runners had pacemakers during their run. Ken Peeters and your reporter guided van der Kleij, Pieter Hendrickx encouraged his brother Wannes. Joost Talloen ran with his sister, Bruno De Lat with Greet Oeyen and Benjamin Hofmans was making the pace of Vinciane Mulpas. Saartje had her mother around the tour in the forest.

Also running fast enough today was junior runner Wouter Leeuws, finishing first. He ran most of the race with the Hendrickx family, but Wannes had a hard time during the 5th lap, with Pieter saying to him: "we're running a flat speed, it's the others who are accelerating", which was also true in some way, since we decided the initial speed of Hendrickx(x2), Leeuws, Jeroen and Dries van der Kleij and Hans Talloen was just too fast. We ran a slow first lap, perfectly on schedule with 7:30 and accelerated a bit the next tour, before another two flat loops, which gave us enough confidence to bridge the gap to Hendrickx(x2) during the fifth lap. Talloen and the two other van der Kleij's were already passed some time earlier.

The selection races for WOC will take place next weekend at unknown maps in the Alsace region (FR).

Detailed results will be added to the article as they are published (and correct, because the preliminary results aren't).