“Yesterday (Friday) Day20 he got back on track after 3-4 tough days with a calf problem, 30 degree days, and the Tropical storm that blew up on Wednesday,  and made 63 miles for the day.”

This was, as Adrian put it, “His best day for over a week.”

“…At 5Pm today he has covered over 32 miles today. And after his usual wee afternoon nap and a short massage he is all set for the cooler evening session when we hope he will touch 60 miles again for the day.”

Before leaving the race and handing over to Adrian, Tim Rainey sent me some photos (which will appear here shortly – as soon as I get a stable broadband connection!) and told me :

“William’s says the running feels good now. Also its raining and cooled down to 22 degrees with a bit of wind chill.”

While that might not sound like all that much fun, it’s actually very good from William’s point of view as 22 degrees C. is still a hot day by Orkney standards, and we are all somewhat used to the odd drop of rain on the isles… So William will really look on this as a very welcome break from the relentless heat of the earlier part of the race.

For those of you wondering how William is doing in terms of food, nutrition and weight-loss etc, although in the first weekWilliam felt he was probably under-eating a little – mostly to do with being self-crewed at the time so sometimes missing deliveries of food to the kitchen or not quite having enough time to sort out eating everything he should have been, he is otherwise manging to keep his weight mostly stable with only some very slight weight loss. Tim wrote :

(This week) “William weighes in at 129 pounds. 1 pound down on last week. Not very accurate – he was wearing his raincoat!”

Accurate or not, managing to only loose around 1lb (half a kilo) after 7 days of near-constant exercise is quite an achievement and shows both that William’s nutrition is working well and also that the race organisers are doing a good job of looking after the runners at the event.

More soon – Shaun