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Sakurai In Pain

The racers continued their running across the woody landscape and after 20 kilometers crossed the border between Victoria and New South Wales. A nice sunny day was an encouragement, but the injured runners weren’t feeling very good.

Kaname Sakurai still hasn’t recovered and wasn’t able to run yet, so he walked through the whole stage. Without the help of his escorting crew, the organisers and everybody else, he wouldn’t have made to the finish line in time. The time limit for this particular stage was 14 hours and 23 minutes. He was running with an average speed of over 7 km/h in the beginning of the stage, but managed only about three km/h in the last kilometers. He beat the time limit by 40 minutes and could hardly stay on his feet in the finish. His heroic performance today could leave some negative consequences to his painful muscles in the future. The oranisers suggested using crutches on tomorrow’s stage, to unburden his right leg. The question is how much more can his left leg take. Sakurai is a very persistant runner, so there’s no fear of him mentaly breaking, for he has proven in the last few stages that he is real fighter. Everyone in the competition wishes he would make it to Canberra.

While Anatoliy Kruglikov won again, ahead of Derxen, Dusan decided to take a bit more relaxing pace for the first time in the competition. "For the first time in this race, I ran completely relaxed, not worrying about my opponents and the time. The "duel" with Sakurai was exhausting, phyisically as well as mentaly. Although he was my main opponent for a long time, I feel sorry that he’s paying such a big price for his mistakes. I admire his perseverance," said Dusan in the finish.

The struggle for fifth place between Molnar and Francis is getting more and more interesting again. Molnar seems to have trouble keeping up with consistant Mick Francis, who managed to gain another 12 minutes and 28 seconds on the Hungarian and has narrowed Mihaly’s overall advantage to 40minutes and 21 seconds. Mick would need to gain at least 10 minutes on each of the four remaining stages to get ahead of Molnar.

Both Georges had trouble making it to the finish line. Audley said: "I couldn’t sleep very well, so my exhausted body wasn’t ready for my usual running. I ran out of energy half way through the stage and had to walk for a while on the second half of the stage." Jermolajevs had to slow down today, since ge outdid himself in the last few stages. Stefan Schlett seems to have warmed up in the closing stages of the competition. Me managed 8th place today and beat his friends, Schieke and Kobus, by more than an hour. "I will have to speed up tomorrow in order to hold on to my advantage over Helmut and Karl-Heinz. I might run along with Kalashnikov, sorry Kruglikov, for a while," commented Stefan, who was, along with Kobus, in good spirits today.

Paul Every and Bobby Brown were the happiest competitors today. After a short rest they ran, along with their escorts Chris and Jeff, another eight kilometers to the cost. That way they have achieved their goal to run from Australia’s west to east coast. Along with them they took two bottles, filled with sea water from the Indian Ocean, and pured part of the Indian Ocean into the Pacific Ocean. They filled up the bottles again, this time with sea water from the Pacific Ocean. "This bottle will have special place in my house," said Paul. "This is the biggest achievement of my life," commented Bobby Brown, who couldn’t quite comprehend what he has achieved. Then, they oppened up two bottles of Champagne and cellebrated their success with their friends. Their run to Canberra is merely a formality, so their thoughts are with Kaname, who hopes to make the time limit on tomorrow’s stage.

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