KIMbia will be well represented this weekend at the IAAF World Championships in Cross Country, with Lineth Chepkurui captaining her Kenyan team, Shalane Flanagan and Brent Vaughn leading the US senior women’s and men’s teams, respectively, as the reigning national champions, and Andrew Bumbalough bringing experience from the 2006 junior race into his senior debut.

Simon Bairu placed an impressive 12th last year, and though he is taking a year off from the event, he provides us with a first-hand look at what will be going down on the course this Sunday:

The IAAF Cross Country Championships is the greatest distance race in the world. I love the fact that you are going up against the top six runners from each country from around the world. You’ve got milers, 10k runners, and marathoners, all gunning for the hardest gold medal in distance running. It’s like our Super Bowl.

What stands out most from my experiences of running it is the five to ten minutes just before the race starts. You can feel the tension in the air as everyone tries to get in their last few strides. Then, with about two minutes left, they put all the athletes in their assigned boxes and it’s just eerily quiet as the clock counts down to when the gun will go off. But as soon as the race starts, it’s loud, physical, and chaotic for the full twelve “K.”