Thursday April 11th Stage 4 (Continued)

For me, this was luckily a day of �rest� in the loosest sense of the word.  Stage 4 lasted over a period of 48 hours due to its length, and for the majority of the competitors who were still out on the course somewhere there was no opportunity of rest.  The key to the stage, although difficult to comprehend, was to finish as quickly as possible in order to gain a greater period of recovery prior to stage 5.

The first sensation upon waking up after a fitful, uncomfortable night was that of excruciating pain in both eyes.  I went straight to the medics, known as Doc Trotters, to get them sorted.  Having queued for 15 minutes or so, along with a dozen others that had exactly the same problems, a doctor treated my eyes to a great deal of interest from other medics.  �Zere is a dune in your eyes� the doctor said to me as he flushed them out with a saline solution, scraped the dirt out with a cotton bud and treated them with antiseptic.  Back in the tent, I had my first good look at my feet.  A large blister had come up on my right heel, with another on the side of the right foot and a third and fourth on the tips of my left toe.  I knew I�d also lose some toenails as a couple had turned black.  Compared to some though I had been lucky.  People were hobbling around camp with feet in a really bad state and most people seemed to have problems with their eyes as well.  The organisers had been selling goggles in on of the admin tents and these were snapped up in an instant amidst fears of running the last 2 stages in similar conditions.

Apart from receiving some e-mails during the day which cheered me up enormously, very little happened during the day.  The terrible conditions continued all through the day and competitors were still finishing the stage in the early evening � having been out on the course for almost 40 hours.  The wind did not relent at all and there was nothing you could do apart from lie in your sleeping bag with your face covered by your buff headscarf.  You couldn�t eat, drink, talk or move around.  Russ summed it up perfectly, describing it as a �shit fight�.
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