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The Desert Trek. All photos courtesy Mike Bitton.

Quick update on the race.

After 20 hours of trekking through the Arabian Desert, the top five teams all finished the stage together early yesterday morning. It sounds like Team Nike, Desert Islands, Team NZ, Wilsa Helly Hansen and Outdry/Vibram all raced through the night together, with Nike’s Chris Forne navigating for the whole group. Apparently it was really difficult for any team to truly break away in the desert dunes. More updates on the race website and CheckpointZero.com.

Team Nike resting in the shade of a Jeep on yesterday's trek.

Sari dumping the sand from her shoes. The team wore cycling time trial booties to try and keep the sand out.

With their strong effort on the trek, Team Nike has moved all the way from 10th into 5th place overall. There are 26 minutes separating Nike from both the third and fourth place teams. Leaderboard here. Tomorrow morning (tonight for us) the teams will start the final stage of the race with a 12km mountain bike into the mountains of Jebel Hafit, followed by 14km of rock scrambling and rope work and ending with a 27km bike sprint back through the streets of Abu Dhabi to the finish line.

I got a text from Mike Kloser this morning and he said that Chris has struggled a bit in the kayak but raced strong again on the trek. Sari and Micheal are hanging tough. They’re disappointed with their current standing but have not given up.

It will incredibly difficult for Nike to make up 26 minutes on this last stage, but the team was really fast on the ropes last year and I know they’ll be giving it their all to finish on the podium.

Thanks for your support! I’ll post one final update tomorrow morning.