We started the day at 8am after a brutal cold night camping out on the salt flats. This desert has huge extremes and we are getting both of them. The long march started out with 16km of salt flats. Mix of crusty trail and nasty craggy hard and sharp salt. Many places all you can do is hike, carefully and try not to blow any ankle. It knocks the wind right out of you. The next two stages were mix of hard and soft packed sand and I handled ok. Just pushed one stage at a time. It’s amazing how your mindset changes in this day. I judged wanted to get through the first 42km so I could push hard in the last three. After the end of stage 3 – 32km, we got a surprise, they gave each of us the choice of Coke or Pepsi. Coke it was! Oh man, what a boost! Gave us a good jolt and helped me run a difficult stage four. A mix of sand, salt flats, a …