I must start this blog post with a thank you to Mr Paul and Miss Karen (pictured below). They are the owners of the RV park where we stayed in Mankato, Kansas. As soon as they learned about the run across the USA and the 2 charities that I'm raising funds for they returned the site fee that I paid and also let the Support Team use the laundry facilities for free. Yet more amazing generosity from the American public.
Due to catching up with my blog and other media duties I didn't get started until 10 am. It was absolutely red hot by this time. I was fully aware that the heat was just a small taste of things to come with temperatures of over 100 degrees F due on Wednesday and Thursday.
I met the support team at the first drinks stop and told the that we would be taking a long break. I explained that the new tactic to help beat the heat would be to run between 0600 and 1200 then 1800 and 0000. The excellent routine that had seen me clock up a record week of miles would be put to one side for the time being.
After some food and a tactical snooze, things were underway again. The tactical snooze wasn't the best as the RV was red hot. You just can't win sometimes!
There was a lot of passing farm traffic later in the day. There seemed to be lots of harvesting activity in the nearby fields too. This was the first time in hundreds of miles that I'd seen anything like that in the fields. It was a novelty to watch as I ran by!
The last 2 hours were done in total darkness. Shelli joined me for a few miles near the end and by 2300 and 23 miles of running I stopped to get some sleep. The sun would be up in 7 hours and I needed to get a head start before the heat of the day made things very challenging!
