Jen’s support crew is doing an awesome job of emailing me reports from the field:

here we are, back on line, it was 30 hours without any signal, rolling around very remote areas, wich are awesome! so, the team is at the moment arriving in Viçosa do Ceara, coming from trekking, and switching to biking. it is going to be a big trek, including climbing, ascent, descent! they are considering to do this piece in 10 hours time, since they already payed 5 from their 8 mandatory hours! on the last PC, about 5 hours ago, according to myself, Jen was the best shape in the team, she is handling very well the local hotness! Good girl! now, dart nuun are at 8th position, checked on the last PC, 5 hours ago! that’s gonna be all for now, coming back from the next PC, if the signal helps! 8-)))))))))

They have been racing for over 53 hours now.  The race organizers estimated the winning time to be around 65 hours, but i’m not sure how close the top teams are to that.

Rob Howard from Sleepmonster.com wrote:

Dart Nuun were another team who found the ride hard, but the US team are still racing and are in the top 10. They said the ride was so sandy it was hard to make progress and wasn’t an enjoyable experience! (It was because of the sand that SOLE were stripping down their bikes as much as possible and rigging a new towing system to cope with it.)

Be sure to head over to Sleepmonsters.com and read the full race report.