Stage four is called The Lull. At 36km it looks short compared to the monstrously long Stage Five, and that can lead runners to assume it is an easier day. In actuality, it is arguably the toughest single stage of any of our events. Besides a 200m stretch of hard-packed trail leading to the first river crossing just outside Huacaria, the entire route is run on twisting, undulating, jungle trail. To give an idea of the scale, it took a team of 16 people, 14 days to recut the trail after our 3-year absence. Within months, the jungle will swallow it again. We’re not in charge around here, the jungle makes the rules.

The weather stayed benign overnight, no more heavy rains to soak and demoralize the runners. Still, a few weren’t able to start this morning’s stage. Tony Howarth, Rena Mutaguchi, and Rebecca Emslie weren’t able to start today. This was particularly upsetting for Rebecca who was so excited to be taking part in her first event of this kind and had been moving extremely strongly in the first couple of days. Rebecca has remained with the team and will no doubt be at the finish line tomorrow to greet the incoming runners. Elsewhere, a handful of runners who had been forced to pull out of earlier stages managed to rejoin the race. These were Rob Wood and Michelle Hincks who both wanted to squeeze as much out of the experience of being here as they could and were given the green light by our medical team to re-enter the fray.

There were 2 distance options today. Those who reached CP3 before 3pm were rewarded with the opportunity to complete the King of the Hill section of the race. A beast of an ascent and descent contained within an 8km stretch of sweltering rainforest terrain. We have special awards for the fastest through that section and the results are below (along with Stage Three’s times and the overall standings). Charlie Good, a massive affable character who can always be heard laughing around camp, took King of the Hill, with Queen of the Hill going to Sheila Sanei.

In the overall standings, Jon Shield had done enough in the earlier stages of the race that his 3rd position today hasn’t shaken him loose from the top of the race. In 2nd overall is Sergey Shcherbakov with Bert Gossey in 3rd.

The first woman to reach tonight’s camp at Villa Carmen was once again Sheila Sanei, followed barely 15 minutes later by Veronique Leivin. 3rd was Marie-Louise Pharoany. This top 3 are also the current women’s podium in the overall standings too.

Aum Gandhi, unfortunately, wasn’t able to finish the stage today. The same goes for Carl Willcock who determinedly rejoined the race for the day after missing out on stage three. They are also fine and resting at tonight’s camp at Villa Carmen. We will see in the morning if they have recovered enough overnight to run again.

We say overnight. That’s something of an exaggeration of the time they have available to rest. With so much distance to cover tomorrow, the runners are going to be starting tomorrow’s stage at 04:30 (10:30 UK Time), so will likely be up around 3am. As with today, there will be a cut-off in place at CP3 and runners who don’t reach it by a time specified in tomorrow’s pre-race briefing will take the shorter route home. Those who finish the shorter route still get a medal at the finish line but you will notice them drop off the leaderboard.

Stage Three Times:

King of the Hill:

Overall Standings: