Update 2

Dammit, last night's blog didn't post - damn sketchy networks...

Anyway...

The team are doing great so far. Both nights so far have been long and cold - like the UK it's been getting dark about 5pm. The first night was spent up in the Serra de Estrella area, up above 1600m and the wind and fog made for a horrible place to be. Navigation was hard, there are a lot of access tracks and mountain roads, and the maps are quite hard to read - anything other than a major tar-seal road is just marked as a thin black line, which by head lamp is quite hard to distinguish. BUT...

Unlike 7 or 8 teams so far, Team Cruachan are still in the race. There've been a handful of dropouts, including a number of the leading teams - Multisport.Fi, Team Finland and Explore Sweden included. It looks like a couple of the village fountains weren't quite as clean water, sickness in the teams being rife. There's been a few nasty crashes on the skating sections, people are wearing out brake blocks on the descents, and those who started the race with niggling injuries are finding them a little more niggling than before...

Cruachan missed the kayak stage yesterday, a 20km paddle down the Rio Zezere, because it closed at 3:30pm and they missed the cutoff, so they've had an extra 15km of trekking. I'm waiting at T9, the end of an MTB/start of a skate transition, and the updates I've had from the organisation say they're still moving okay (despite the Sat Tracker showing them still being at the start!) and I'll post as soon as I see them!!

Thanks for all your support, any messages, post comments and I'll get them to the team when they arrive.

Cheers!