Day 6 Report (Marathon Day - Updated)

Day 6 - Marathon Day

At the pre_stage briefing given by Patrick Bauer this morning, we were told that temperatures yesterday reached 44 degrees and were set to be higher today, with less breeze than before. This is a daunting thing to hear as you embark on a 26.2 mile footslog across the desert.

However the other amazing thing to hear is that so far, over 11,000 emails of good luck have been sent to competitors out here by their friends and families. So a Huge Thank You to all of you who wrote to us - we are extremely grateful for your support and that you have been thinking of us. It has not been possible to send reports back to Eventrate owing to slightly erratic email tent opening hours!

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The course today was easier than most which explains how I was able to finish in 5 hours 50 minutes or thereabouts - a time I am delighted with. At the time of writing only Tom Lawley, Charlie Myers ad Al Hay had arrived back at my tent, though judging by the resolve shown this morning by our tent I expect all our guys to finish well. I total, about 22 runners have "abandoned" as the organisers call it. Not bad out of a total of 670 starters.

Beth Wright had an uncomfortable awakening last night. She woke to find that the tent had collapsed on her. One of the spars supporting it hit her on the head as it came down and obviously she was a bit surprised, but she completed the marathon well.

My lovely Charlotte is back in one piece. However, she is refusing to take off her shoes this evening. It was so painful putting them on before this morning before the marathon stage that she doesn't want to have to repeat the performance tomorrow morning before the final stage.

At about 9pm this evening as we were all bedding down for the night Aki Lalani arrived at the camp, one of the final two runners to get in. With a time of race time of 11.57 he just beat the two camels which sweep behind the runners and represent the cut off (and arrived in 12 hours precisely). Ali has been in considerable pain for several days and has had to cut his shoes apart piece by piece just so that he can squeeze his infected and severely blistered feet into them. At the finish line he received a hero's welcome from support crew and many runners who got up to welcome him.

The two Leslie brothers, Cameron and Nathan, completed in about 11 hours. Nathan has been struggling with a severe knee injury most of the week and his brother agreed to accompany him all day today. Despite the pain, Nathan was able (and extremely relieved) to finish. He is now looking forward to getting tomorrow's final 22kn stage over.

Everyone else that I have mentioned in my reports from the course completed the stage I think. The atmosphere in the British Village‚ (and around the camp generally) is very upbeat. Just a Half Marathon (just a Half Marathon, that is) to go. And then the finish line<sum>.

Tomorrow is just a short 22 kms, or a half marathon in old money. Hard work maybe, but I think we'll manage it somehow, even if we have to crawl on our hands ad knees! We have without doubt broken the back of the "The Toughest Footrace on Earth" now, although I am beginning to wonder if it would be more appropriate to bill it as "The Ugliest Foot Race on Earth" having seen some of the mashed paws of my fellow runners over the last few days. And I have untold admiration for every single one of them.