Day 5

Day 5 course: 42.1K: 19K track to the dunes, 5K dunes, 18K track to the dune camp.

Times: Owen - 4:25, Me - 4:40, Budjargal - 5:05

Where to start? What an eventful day. I felt pretty ropey this morning - kind of sick in the stomach. Owen was clearly struggling a bit too with his foot, and took some fairly strong painkillers. I don't know what was causing my malaise but breakfast didn't go down that well and I wasn't feeling very happy about the forthcoming marathon. We decided to run together for as long as we could and bashed out the first 18K or so to the dunes with plenty of banter and a fair amount of "digging in" on both our parts. Either way, we had a decent lead over the rest and were making better progress than we may have felt like we were. The dunes were slow and steady and as we limped our way over them we could see Budjargal in the background. My left leg was hurting quite a bit by this point - it seemed almost like cramp, a shooting pain down the left hand side around the knee area. As we hit the post-dunes 24K checkpoint we stopped to take on water and when I tried to set off I doubled up in pain. Budjargal came charging past at that point and since I could hardly move, let alone run, I sent Owen off chasing him. I took a few minutes to walk to see how the pain would dissipate and took a quite comical video segment where I discussed my "low point" of the race.

The next 12K or so were really tough - the hardest of my running life. Every time I switched from running to walking or stopping I was in serious pain. However, I could just about keep up a bit of a shuffle and manage the pain so I trudged through the next hour and a bit, keeping an eye on Budjargal up in the distance, willing myself through 1K at a time. Eventually, at about 36K I realised Budjargal was stopped and caught him up. He was desperate for water, having run out some time ago it seemed. I gave him a big drag from my camelback and pointed out the van up ahead signalling the checkpoint. I took some water from Dave but didn't think to re-fill the camelback, which I assumed had plenty of water in, and then made a break for the finish. It was only when the van was a spec behind me that I realised Budjargal had taken all my water and not told me. I took the tough decision that with under 5K to go I would be ok to charge on to camp and that certainly provided incentive to cover the last few minutes as quickly as possible.

I arrived in camp about 15 minutes after Owen and about 20 minutes before Budjargal. As we saw the Mongolian running into camp we realised that he was fully naked, save for his hat and running shoes. One of the most bizarre sights of my whole life. His english is limited and about the most we could figure was that he felt it would be a good surprise to us all. That is certainly true.

People rolled in all day and we enjoyed supporting people as they came into camp, as we have enjoyed it all race. Remarkably, given the heat and the tough course, we had just 1 more runner drop out. Rhys was forced to stop with heat exhaustion just 4K or so from the end. He was on a drip all night and looked a million times better in the morning. Mood in the camp was a bit low after such a brutal stage and we even had a slightly fractious team meeting in the evening, but much of that was surely down to tiredness.

My leg still hurts a lot and the efforts of Orshok, the race doctor, have not really helped that much. Owen's blister looks even worse too. Tomorrow is the last day though, and I think we'll try to stay together for it.