II. Report, 16 -26/01/2017

Good afternoon, good evening!

I think that after two weeks in the outback of Australia, namely New South Wales, we can confidently say that we have established ourselves here. We can particularly feel it in the amount of flies that are trying to colonize us every day 🙂

At the end of the second week we reached town Willcannia and we have 1030 km behind us. Then we struggled with psychological stress almost four days and we are in Broken Hill now.

About 350 km of our run so far led along unpaved roads across the plains, where we saw a large number of animals – kangaroos, echidnas, more than half a meter long reptiles, ostriches, spiders and other…

The country is extremely dry here, during this heat we managed to catch a glimpse of the spontaneous fire in the country.

We passed through small towns as Hillstone and Ivanhoe. I must say that we met very willing people ready to help us right away. For example filling station attendant who gave us full tank for free, a man from fast food who not only gave us fries and dessert but also helped us with our laundry and willing policemen who helped us decide which road we should use to Wilcannia and then to Broken Hill (because they were just closing the road that we had in our plan, it added about 80 additional kilometers to our journey).

Since we are still struggling with different variants of the transfer: night / day / phased, we do not have steady time for running, we just always adapt it according to the weather.  It even rained once – less than 5 minutes. Then a huge headwind arose and we had difficulty to move faster than 4 km per hour – but at least it was pleasant in the morning, „only“ 32 degrees Celsius 🙂  In this weather it is common that the night temperature is around 38 degrees Celsius.

Physically we feel relatively OK and legs adequate to the kilometers. Drinking regime increased to almost 8 liters of liquids per person, per day.

The van serves us superbly – also in places where there is no shade. The guys are great – always ready invent something if needed and cope with difficult circumstances. I would like to thank them for the great support.

Individual feelings:

Jozef Rajchl:

A lot of flies – I can handle it only with mosquito net on my face. The heat here is really overwhelming. In case we choose not to run at night, then there is a big problem with the heat (you cannot even get a good rest during the day since it is 45 degrees in the shade). So I am failing to repeat my two longer runs after each other (they were during the night), so I am very sad, angry, depressed … This week was also hard for me for family reasons. Jarko, a great man, left us. Jarko thank you and great honor to your memory. I’m sorry that I will not be there 🙁

We are determined to fight it as hard as we can. I am very glad that I have such great guys here with me, who are always ready to help. I am extremely happy to have family and friends, I think about them all the time and it helps me to run further – kilometer after kilometer. Thank you.

Branislav Klementovič:

Smiley people, beautiful nature (country) and already enough kangaroos.  Too hot, also in the shade. Relax by the water would be great. Tired but happy 🙂

Lubos Kršiak:

Finally we have the right equipment in our traveling kitchen … so Jozef will never be hungry and will have a lot of energy: D