IT´S FINALLY ALL OVER!!

To the huge relief of all competitors the Jungle Marathon 2008 is now finally over!!

Stage 6 was only 32 km (a half marathon and a cheeky 10 km) along the beach. We again started at 6 am to enable us to cover as much distance as possible before we were devastated by the heat of the sun. Having been covered by the canopy of trees for the majority of the last week (which doesn´t feel oppressively hot - but as we found out from Stage 2 is horrific in its own way!), being out in the belting sun was a huge shock to the system. Neither was it helped by most runners having completely trashed feet and / or being utterly exhausted. The desire to get to the finish line was incredible. It would all be over; no more getting up at 4:30am, no more squatting over a hole in the ground, no more eating freeze dried food of which many had become utterly repulsed, no more drinking water - which had grown to taste more and more like plastic by the day, no more aching shoulders from carrying that damn backpack, no more having to wrap everything up in dry bags to protect it from water and ants, no more getting bitten by ants - which I kid you not get everywhere!! (with the lucky exception of things you´ve previously sprayed with DEET) , no more chaffing, no more sleeping in a hammock, and no more damn running! (well, for a couple of months anyway).

After three quarters of the distance on this final stage (having regularly dragged my sahara hat through the river and thrown water over my head to cool down) I was very dehydrated and had pins and needles in my hands. At the final checkpoint (with approx 8 km left to run) I dumped by backpack down, handed my bottles to the kind support guys to re-fill (The medical and support crew were an absolutely awesome bunch and worked really hard over the course of the week - for which all of the runners are extremely grateful - Thank you!!) and lay down almost completely submerged in the river for what seemed like 10 minutes.

In view of the vast majority of competitors who are now staggering very strangley and in immense pain, the Final Stage of this years JM was sponsored by the Annie Lennox song - Walking on Broken Glass.

I will endeavour to update the blog over the next few days / week with some final thoughts / pictures / videos - including a photo of the tarantula we found at the campsite one evening. Unfortunately I don´t have any photos of jaguars, although at least a couple of runners did encounter jaguars during the run (the lucky sods!)

Cheers, JQ