Stage 4 - quick update as there wasn't much variety today. It was the first day where we felt we were in a desert. A rocky one! The course was easy, and we ran all 42 kilometres. There were no uphills. The path was flat or slightly downhill, and even though there were stones throughout, they were quite small so we could keep running. The only thing slowing us down were our injuries. Alex's Achilles tendon and my shin splint are still hurting, and running on them doesn't help. But we went to the medical tent again today, and we are doing everything we can to keep our injuries from getting worse (apart from stopping the running), so hopefully we'll be fine for the next part...The long march! We will be running as much of it as possible, even though it's called the long march. So fingers crossed that everything will go well tomorrow!

To my Greek friends and family: Please use Latin characters when you write blog comments! Otherwise, because of how the system is here, I get comments that are full of weird non-Greek characters, and they make no sense at all!

Stage 3 - what a day! Rain, rain, rain...I thought I would be getting away from the London weather in this holiday - apparently not!! So what was the course like today? I don

So...Stage 2! I will tell you again about the different parts of today's race. The start was difficult. We basically had to go up almost 600 metres in a distance of 5 kilometres. Given that I live in London, where uphill training isn't really possible, it was quite difficult for me! The path was snowy and narrow, and there was a long row of people going up the mountain. Whenever I looked ahead, the way up seemed endless, so I felt very discouraged. I tried focusing on where I was stepping rather than looking how much there was left, but we still had to stop a few times, as I was feeling tired, and a few people overtook us. Towards the end though, my motivation came back, and we started hiking a bit faster until the highest point of the whole race at 2800 metres. I was so happy! After that it became much easier. We ran downhill through the snow and then on a gravel road, passing the first checkpoint and reaching the second checkpoint having overtaken quite a few people. My mood was indeed lifted! The last two parts were quite similar. It was basically rolling hills for nearly 18 kilometres, which meant that we had to switch between hiking and running all the time. It's definitely not one of the difficult parts of the Gobi March, but we couldn't find a rhythm due to the ups and downs all the time, so it felt a bit slower because of this. And of course, we were starting to get more tired by that time. I fell once, but it was so close to the end, that I didn't care so much, even though I got a few scratches. And finally we reached the end after 40 kilometres! Since then we've been eating, stretching and resting. Alex and I also made our first visit to the medical tent today. Only minor injuries, but better safe than sorry. We also realised that the medical tent is a really cool place to hang out! There were quite a few of us in there, and we ended up staying for over an hour chatting with people. And the medics are awesome! A highlight!

That's it so far for today.

Stage 1 completed! It was a cold start! We were expecting rain, but SNOW??? That was a surprise! The first part was rocky and technical -