The women racing today, for roughly two hours, had to contend physically and psychologically not only with the elements — a strong opposing current, wind chop on the surface, a blazing sun, water high in bacteria — but also with one another, ceaselessly, right up to the last hundredth of a second.
From the port town of Saranda, at the foot of the Albanian Riviera, you can see the coast of Corfu blazing across the water.
The blue-clad 'link volunteers' – so named because they act as a link between tsunami-affected communities and the authorities – move around the shelters in the blazing heat, verifying water quality, checking toilets and looking for garbage.
You might imagine this event, where 65,000 people converge in a blazing desert devoid of water, food or electricity, would be a recipe for disaster.
Certainly not those who were there, who smelled the blazing oil on the water, heard the shriek of sirens and planes, the frantic tapping of men trapped in the capsized Oklahoma.
The sun can get blazing hot... the water frigidly cold.
Television footage showed him pushing a button to unleash water on blazing forest fires about 120 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Moscow.
Researchers have assembled an interactive map documenting the global emergence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the amphibian chytrid fungal disease that is blazing through populations of water-dwelling animals around the world.
It snowed the day before — giving a strange feeling at a time of year when there is virtually no darkness — but on Sunday the sun blazed across the water.
The worst time to water is during blazing midday, because it evaporates.
