Last blog post for this evening (circa 2.30am)

At 2.11 am (when the screen shot below was taken) William Sichel is back in 1st place having thus far covered 167.77 miles / 270 km; Hans-Jürgen Schlotter is in 2nd place, around 5 miles / 8km behind William.

As I mentioned earlier, we are likely to see William and Hans-Jürgen swapping 1st and 2nd positions for some time to come, especially when the athletes come on or off track for food or rest. Some people like to view racing as a duel between the leading runners, but in a six day event it is less a duel and more a war of attrition. However, as interesting as the battle for first place may be, William isn’t going to be paying too much attention to the performance of Hans-Jürgen (or anyone else), as he has a very specific race plan that he’ll be sticking to no matter what the leader board may be saying at this point. If William does decide to actually “race” Hans-Jürgen at any point during the 6-days, it certainly won’t be until the later stages of the event. William has gone into the 6-day race with the very clear intention of breaking the All-Time Scottish record for 6-days, and this will be his main concern throughout the race. All that said, I know that William will actually appreciate having some stiff competition over the 6-days, and Hans-Jürgen’s top-class performance will almost certainly help William to dig deep and push hard when the time comes. At present William is running exactly to our pre-race plans and currently looks set to reach his 48hr targets (at 11am UK time). But as always, there’s still a long way to go and much that could happen before the end of the race…