Why is it that most of the places we’ve stayed in this past week are renovating? Once again, I was awakened by sounds of construction outside the window. This is a common occurrence when you’re trying to sleep late in the morning. Not because I’m getting extra sleep, but because bedtime on the 9pm to 3am shift generally winds up being 5am.

We’ve just left the small town Bayan Qagan and are on the road to Beijing, although Yellow team (me, Rudy, Paul and Heiko) won’t actually see the city, unless you count the airport. We finished running at 3am last night, at which point we learned due to travel logistics with flights to Japan, we would take over the 3pm to 9pm shift for today. Once again, a night of little sleep, and shortened recovery for our tired legs. Five hours is manageable once in a while, but this week we’ve been lucky to get even that. After long travel hours on bumpy roads in the Gobi, the heat and noise which is not conducive to day time sleeping, combined with early morning border crossing into China, we are suffering the effects of intense fatigue. Paul and Heiko are pushing through nausea and sickness (perhaps a stomach bug or maybe remnants of food poisoning?) while Rudy and I are limping along with injured muscles. Running these days is not fun. Thumping down three flights of stairs with our suitcases, we checked out this morning and ran into Sean and Simon on the Orange Team. Rested and exuding good health, they’ve offered to pick up a 10 mile leg for us tonight. When shit hits the fan, we send thanks to Team Orange for helping us through…. With some more sleep, hopefully Team Yellow will be back on
track.