I'm very relieved to report that stage 5 of the run around the world will start at around noon on Thursday June 7th 2018 from the Victor Statue in Kalmegedan, Belgrade, Serbia.
The stage five calendar will be "reset" to day one and I am now scheduled to arrive in Astana, Kazakhstan on Friday September 14th 2018.
A condition of the release of Chappie to me here in Belgrade is that it has to be out of Serbia within 72 hours of handover. So as soon as I get Chappie tomorrow morning, the clock starts ticking.
It will take me a couple of hours to unpack and setup Chappie for the onward journey. I intend to take a few shortcuts here and will complete this task when I stop running at the end of days one and two. I then have to walk with Chappie to the start line which will take a couple of hours. Hopefully, some locally sourced transport can be found for Chappie before then which will save time. *UPDATE* Thank you to Vladan at the British Embassy for arranging local transport for Chappie.
I will have until approximately 9 am on Sunday morning to run 83 miles with Chappie to the Serbian border with Romania at Srpska Crnja. The Romanian town of Jimbolia lies just the other side of the border.
It's a very achievable target and my initial thoughts are to run 20 miles on Thursday, 32 miles on Friday, 32 miles on Saturday and the remaining few miles to the border early on Sunday morning. I'm waiting to hear if the border crossing is 24 hours or not which will affect things. *UPDATE* I've just heard from my friend Branko (he's a policeman at the Serbian Border with Croatia in Sid) that it's a 24 hour crossing.
I will, of course, run my scheduled mileage during the rest of Sunday. It will be at this point that I'll assess what "damage" has been done to the schedule (if any) and attempt to make up any lost miles over the following week. By my calculations, I'll need to run 5 days of 33 miles and 1 day of 31 miles in order to reach Satu Mare on time where I'll have my first rest day on Saturday June 16th. That's all subject to change but making up for a late start on Thursday while crossing the border and reaching the first rest day on time is very achievable.
I'd like to say a huge thank you to Alexsandra, Vladan, Lucy and Dusan at the British Embassy for everything they've done for me this week. They have put a lot of effort into finding a solution this week. While we aren't quite sure who exactly gave warehouse staff the official "yes" to release the buggy I'm just happy to put it down to some "divine intervention".
