40 miles into the race:
A Japanese runner in the lead

40 miles into the race, the real torture is beginning. It's early in the afternoon and the temperature at Stovepipe Wells reaches 120 degrees F. Soon it will bekome even hotter.

The next 20 miles the road is slightly ascending from just above sea-level to 4000 feet. The slope is hard to see, but the runners will feel it. A road-sign warns car-drivers to turn off their air-conditioning, otherwise the engine could blow up.

The guys, who clock the runners at this second time split, have made themselves comfortable under a huge umbrella. A look at their notes shows, the 36-year-old Japanese Kename Sakurei is the fastest runner at this point. It has taken him roughly six hours to get here from Badwater, which means that he has paced 12 km/h so far.

His upper body slightly bended forward, his feet hardly loosing contact to the ground and almost sneaking like a snake is the Japanese moving on. A silver cap protects his head against the burning sun.

Dusan Mravlje gets to Stovepipe Wells only a few minutes later. There he's taking a rest at a bench in front of a little supermarket. His crew-member Frank gives him beverages and his daughter Neza a wellcome leg-massage. Still, he is very optimistic: "I have no problems, no pains, that is important."

Unlike many other runners, Dusan is looking pretty fit. He is hopeing, that the runners in front of him have overpaced. Then Dusan steps out of the shadow again and starts running on the highway 190.

A few miles ahead, where the straight road seems endless to most of the runners, the Russian Labutin is on his left upper thigh. The pain is written on his face. It seems long, long time ago as he and his Russian friend Kruglikov led the field and both looked like "running machines". Now it looks like Labutin is about to give up the race. And Kruglikov, too, has turned more into a walker than a runner.

Walking is the preferred discipline of those "runners" in the back-field. Jack Deness, for example, this always joyful Brite, has taken a long rest already at mile 18 in Furnace Creek. Under a palm-tree he was seen drinking a big cup of tea - though it wasn't five o'clock yet. Back on the track he walks leisurly while carrying a colorful umbrella.

Many of these runners have formed little groups. There they start gossiping untill their legs tell to save all the energy for them. From the remaining three Germans - Frixe has dropped out already - each one runs his/her own race. Joey Kelly was seen in Furnace Creek still wearing this long black trousers. Obviously he is thinking, that taking off the clothes bit by bit can help fooling the heat...