A brand new day!

Well my goodness - the sun is suddenly up. We rolled into this huge park 2 hours ago, pitched our tents and crashed. Our van 2 buddies are on course moving that baton ever closer to us. We'll be ready when they arrive here in an hour or so.

Last night was surreal. It's an odd thing to race in the dark in unknown territory. The mental challenge is to avoid the feeling that you're doing something really foolish, and that it might go on forever, unless you stop immediately.

I had another leg that took me close to an hour. Body was sore the whole way, and this time I had hills - lots and lots of them. It seemed interminable.

But the real hill climbers were christoph and Scott. C. got out ahead of us as we loitered at the transition area, and we couldn't believe the thing he had to climb. It kept tipping up steeper and steeper. By the time he got to run a little downhill, he was singing Ode to Joy in German.

Scott's leg had a gradual, but 2k long hill to start - then an almost equally punishing steep downhill, followed by another long climb. He was slamming those water bottles in frustration whenever we stopped for him. At one point he ran right by us without us or him noticing. Sandy, who was on deck and didn't want to face the wrath of Scott if we were AWOL at transition, wisely urged us to motor on poste haste.

Better go find some breakfast. Or maybe not: gotta run once more in about 90 minutes. Hmmm. Maybe just a chocolate milk.

Last detail: in the fog of war we rolled into this park, and amongst many hundreds of vans, we've happened to park right next to Ginny of Peace, Love and Crabs. We're delivering her 2x48 load of Sleemans honey brown as I speak. (she's an ex-pat who misses her Guelph brew). Onwards!