Well Stage 4 finally arrived and I was not looking forward to this one. Although it was meant to be a 'rest' day, only 24km of fairly flat sections, before the longest stage tomorrow it was what they had at the start of this stage that was making me feel a little uneasy. It was a 350 metre swim across the river Tapajos. The thing is I'm not a strong swimmer and with 100+ competitors hussling to get across the river as fast as possible meant that it made things twice as difficult. Also bear in mind that we were also pushing or dragging our rucksack in a waterproof bag so I only had 1 arm free to propel me forward. Plus the rope they had strung across the river was about as much use as a Chocolate Fireguard, as people pushed it so far underwater I could not reach it unless I stuck my head underwater too.
Thankfully I was swimming with Mark 'Tough Guy' Cooke who could see I was struggling as we got half way across. He grabbed my bag and let me push on until I got my breath back b
efore he helped young Vicki who was in a serious panic and was seriously struggling. Thankfully we all got across safely, although now totally soaked for the stage ahead.The rest of this stage was pretty uneventful and we made quick progress through the jungle and community trails. We maintained our speed marching and like the other days so far were joined by Dermot who by this stage was on constant pain killers for his badly blistered feet. Man, this guy is something else. He would l
oad up with pain killers, and then maintain a slow pace until they kicked in after which he would hold a good pace for the rest of the Stage. This suited Mark and myself as we were all of the same opinion that we didn't need to make a mad dash to the finish each day. We were there to get to the finish line in one piece and make sure that we were 1 of the now rapidly reducing group of racers who had initially started only 4 days before. In fact by the end of Stage 4 there were approx. 90 racers out of the original 126.The last few pictures on this blog post were taken while we stopped off at one of the final few checkpoints. It was just after we'd been exposed to the sun for the longest time since starting the Jungle Marathon. Given that we had been under the forest canopy for most of the time until now it was so different to now be under 40 degree heat which was even more uncomfortable than the high humidity of the jungle. Suffice to say we were gulping down litres
of water as we went through this stage and on average we were drinking up to 10-15 litres of water every day just to stay well hydrated.Thankfully the finish for this stage was at one of the many small villages we were now starting to see more and more of. This meant we had purpose built places to hang our hammocks, rather then trying to find a pair of trees that were the right distance apart. And as we had got there in good time we had loads of daylight left to get ourselves sorted for the following day i.e The Long Day (90km).
After another 'tasty' meal and a quick check of the feet, which thankfully did not have any blisters up to this point, it was time to relax and get a good nights sleep for the long day ahead. But before we could get our heads down we once again had to attend our nightly briefing. This was where the race director, Shirley, would provide updates on race
rs who had pulled out and also provide some last minute details of the following days stage. In this case it was details of the Long Stage and amongst all the information provided were details of when we had to reach the infamous Checkpoint 4. If you did not reach and clear this checkpoint by 15.30 hours then you would have to stay there for the rest of the night as it would have been too dangerous to continue due to possible attacks by Jaguar as the light faded. This information encouraged people to get their pace strategies organised to ensure they could reach CP4 and have enough time to then push onto CP5 which was clear of the jungle, and all the nasty things you don't want to meet at night in the middle of the jungle.Race briefing over it was down to another night of interrupted sleep and dreams of another early morning swim across the river Tapajos. Boy I was really looking forward to all that again!
I AM RAISING MONEY FOR CANCER RESEARCH UK: http://www.justgiving.com/Jungle-Marathon-2009
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