Stage 3 - A 'petit adventure'

First up, Happy 80th birthday to my Dad, the long one tomorrow is for you! It should have been 80k!

46C today in the shade, but took it easy and had my best stage in terms of finishing full of running and feeling fine. Blisters were not too much of a problem, and food went well. Rooming with Andrew & Damon is priceless, the info and tricks they have are superb.

Had a little adventure today. At about 22k we went back into the dunes and the bearing given was 288, but all the footsteps went off at about 250, so me being me, I charged off into the dunes on the correct bearing and spent the next hour totally alone in a sea of dunes. Came across camels and their berber who pointed me in the direction I was going, and up and over the next dune was the checkpoint. Ok, so I came at it from the wrong side, but hey, it was great!

Ran strongly from there, either a slightly lighter pack, perhaps 8kg, or excitement of the off course experience. A great booster for that little stage tomorrow.

The email here is batched up on a CD, then sent into town for sending, hence the delay. Emails typically arrive at about 7pm.

Results are being done with a DAG system [same as used by Striders]!!!! so my time yesterday was really 5:24ish. No prob, today was 6:07ish.

Thanks for all the emails, they are a highlight. If I list them I will miss someone, so I have kept them (despite the extra weight ;-) & will drop you a note when I get back.

Latest report was for 49C at CP2, so it is a tad warm, but the humidity is down around 10 per cent which helps. Water is the key element here. We have a tag a around our neck which is punched for every 1.5 litres given, and you must manage the water you have. Extra water above allocation costs a 1 hr penalty per 1.5 litres. So far no prob for me, although deciding to carry an extra litre from the last checkpoint to the finish is a tough decision!

No email tomorrow - expect 15hrs.