Mrs Brendan here, writing up from some notes that I've scrawled whilst
talking to the Big Fella. He called me briefly on Thursday evening
Australian time, presumably middle of the day in deepest Morocco.

It was a very quick conversation, and I may have been confused over
some of the details.... please don't take this as gospel (even though
it is now Good Friday). I'm sure Brendan will correct any
inaccuracies....

He sounds fine, relatively: of course the conditions out there have
been tough, but as we all know, he's made of strong and determined
stuff. Normally, through the course of the entire race, there would be
40 people dropping out: so far in this race, there have been 130.

I got a bit confused about the time line, but Brendan talked about a
really difficult day, I presume it was day 3? When there were 80 drop
outs.. anyway, he said that he almost dropped out himself due to heat
exhaustion.

He managed to get to the next check point, where he waited for 1.5
hours before going on again. Basically, he feels the organisers were
not giving out enough water: he took an extra bottle, which came with
an hour time penalty (he said that in retrospect he should have taken
an IV drip, because that involves no penalty). He finished late....

The heat is unforgiving: he's been running from tree to tree, stopping
for shade.

The day/night stage actually suited him a bit better: he didn't sleep,
but just kept going through the night, when the temperature was much
cooler.

Food-wise (I know that's been a feature of his blog), things have not
been going so well: he's not been able to eat solids on the go, they've
been making him feel sick. He says there's even a rumour going around
that there's a virus, but he thinks it's just the intense effects of
the heat.