We arrived in Breda, Holland at 4am and after a bath to soak my tired legs finally got to bed at 5am. Taeko my Japanese teammate and I have established a nice little routine where we alternate who has a shower first, who gets to chose the best bed and who makes the tea or coffee in the morning. We are both ready to go to bed at the same time (5am at the
moment) and wake up at the same time which has been 2pm. It makes all the difference to have someone who operates the same way and it makes being together 24/7 so much easier.

On waking up at 2pm I caught some of the world News on BBC and watched the final of the French Tennis Open and then took a walk to a nearby village in Breda and wrote a few postcards at an outside café.

At 8pm we drove to the exchange point to start our 9pm - 3am shift……I am writing this in the van at 10pm at night, Taeko has started for our team, she needed to go first as she has a live interview on the radio from Japan at midnight, this will be broadcast all around Japan. Our first exchange point was outside someone’s house in Breda and the owner called Rose came out with tea and biscuits for all of us, such a nice thought - she will now follow our progress on the internet.

We ran into Rotterdam, I did the 12am - 1.15am shift and decided that because I was in Holland I would listen to Abba for my 10miles, I know Abba are not from Holland but I figured it was close! Got to our hotel at 5am and got off to sleep as everyone else was waking up to start the day - that’s a strange feeling.

All of our hotels so far have all been on the outskirts of the big cities so really our routine has being like this on the 9pm -3am shift: Wake up at 2pm, have lunch, watch BBC and do Blogs and then go for a little walk to a nearby village if there is one and soak the legs in the cool water of the hotel pool if there is one. Then we meet at van at 8pm and start shift at 9pm - 3am, drive to next hotel and go to bed at 5am.

This will be a similar routine when we start the 3am -9am shift as we run through Germany in 2 days time, but we go back to normality when we to the Czech Republic and Poland and will not only get to stay in Prague, Krakow and Warsaw but there will be time to look around as we will be on the 9am -3pm shift. It is important to me to be able to spend some time in Poland as this is where my family is from.

My Great, Great Grandfather Joseph Wladislas Edmond Potocki de Montalk came to New Zealand in 1868. My Mother wrote a book Unquiet World about the life of an eccentric cousin of mine Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk , this was published in 2003 and translated into Polish, I hope to find it in one of the bookshops while running through Poland. I will be in Poland on June 20th - 22nd.