DAY 18: REVELATIONS

Day 18: I don't even know where to begin.

We started at one o'clock in the morning, got about three miles in. We were in national land, apparently you can run your sheep, but what they run them with are guardian dogs.

We were on trails that have no path, so we turned back, we decided to wait till sunlight because there was no way for us to find our way around them. As many of you may have seen, the videos thereafter were no trails straight up and over the mountains.

Over the last 15 minutes or so, one of our crew members has coincidentally found the record holder's website, and there was a map on there. That map does not match the data that I copied of her route, which was sending us over mountains. The map that she's posted that is tied to the world record has been entirely on roads. So some of these most god-awful days that we have had have apparently been unnecessary. It's been interesting and an interesting learning. But here nor there, we are probably going to stick to roads here on out. At this point, the timing is so far off, it kind of doesn't matter.

So we're just in the throws of how do we rework logistics? What's the best path forward? And I don't mean path as in trail path because there haven't been any paths. But the best we can do about it is laugh about it. It is what it is. It's been a heck of a ride. It certainly has made us stronger and more resilient at worst. And so we take it for what it is, and we will get ourselves recalibrated and hopefully stay on pavement from here forward. And that should save us some time, some pain, some injury, and hopefully keep us moving.