After a night of hard chasing (gaining ground during the night has become our specialty), the RAAM website now predicts that we will place second by a margin of 1 hour over current second place team and fellow Canadians, Team R.A.C.E.

Time station 36 at about 3:00 pm RAAM time. We have been flying across flat farmland of Illinois on our TT bikes. Not really making a dent in the second and third place teams - but there's still a chance that things will change in the mountains yet to come. I'm told we have 1,000 miles (1,600km) to go. We'll be in Atlantic City soon. It boggles the mind thinking back on all we have seen, in such a short time, most of it entirely new to me - and all on our bikes.

Is what we reached at about 7:30 this morning and we are now half-way to Time Station 35. Should be a series of flat ones before more mountains.

We just reached the Eldorado, Kansas time cut-off point - with 11 hours to spare. On my leg from TS 27 to Eldorado this morning I passed the half-way point of this year's race.

We just did an exchange at 3:30 20 miles past TS 26. Making the most of the windless night after having fought headwinds all the way across the high desert in Colorado and the grasslands of Colorado and Kansas. Feeling stronger and stronger.

Thanks to all for the emails and text messages. Sorry can't reply individually - and sorry too for the lack of blogging - will get it all down eventually.

We are waiting at Time Station 15 for Christopher to arrive any minute. We are about to hit a climb to 11,000ft - and the continental divide.

Yesterday I cruised through Monument Valley AZ/UT (think Close Encounters or the side of U-Haul trucks) on my TT bike at over 40k/hr av. - it was amazing coming out of the desert into a green valley stretching as far as one could see with these amazing rock formations jutting straight up out of the flat grasslands.

. . . Christopher's back to strength and somewhere close to time station 12 . . . About another 80 to TS 14 - we're going to make the 6:00 am (RAAM/eastern time) cut-off.

Here's a message our pedal partner Alex sent us a when things were looking grim no so long ago:

"Hi guys, I know how you are feeling or felt yesterday Chris. I have been throwing up myself. Don't worry about yesterday - you'll get it back. Each day is a new day. Go show them who's the boss. Captain"

It's midnight at time station 3 - 3:00 a.m. RAAM time. We are currently in third place - or were until we pulled into time station 3 without our rooftop red flashers working on the follow van. Apparently all the equipment the film crew was running out on the oulet in the van blew a fuse. Dave has run off to a truck stop to attempt to track one down. We cannot continue until we get the flashers working or day breaks. This is not good.

Christopher and I have been mapping out our shifts in the course map book.  We are splitting up the ride from now until we get over the high point of the race in Colorado according to climbs and descents, with me taking care of the former and Christopher taking care of the latter.  I am very comfortable and confident on any climb and Christopher is the same on descents (with a background of downhill ski racing, motorcycling and racing bikes as a sprinter - and just being far better coordinated and confident than me - Christopher can put as much time into me on a descent as I can into him on

Our interview with Tonya Rouse should be airing on the CP24 evening news today (June 11).

This RAAM thing is . . . so serious in fact that one of the many, many rules is (no word of a lie) that no crew or racer can strip and dance naked for any reason. Which begs the question (at least for the lawyer in me) of whether such behaviour is acceptable if done for no reason.

. . . I went down to breakfast and missed Christopher and BabyZ doing a full Borat - though in tighty-whities - wrestling scene in our room.

We passed the incredibly complicated pre-race inspection of the bikes, clothing, RV and follow van with top marks and no complications thanks to the thorough prep of Mel, Lissy, Dave, Carl and John. We are now clear to race!

We climbed a hill today during our training ride that appeared to have no name. We had to dismount to get around a closed gate and thus started the climb from a standstill on an about 14% grade that levelled out a bit after about 400 metres but continued on for a total of about a mile. When we got to the top I searched for it on googlemaps on my blackberry, but the only road in the vicinity appeared to have to name - I surmised that the locals are in such fear and awe that they dare not utter its name.

So the consensus pretty much is that our custom-painted bikes are the best-looking bikes at RAAM, as evidenced both by certain race officials explicitly stating as much and by the stares of other riders. We are sitting in race headquarters, located right on the beach, waiting to be interviewed, looking out through floor-to-ceiling one-way mirrored windows against the outside of which our bikes are leaning.

Sorry - the mytelus.com site is a bit delayed in its launch. We will put up a banner on our home page when it is ready to go.

So this might make me a bad person but remember how my Telus Blackberry won the which-blackberry-can-complete-a-call-to-or-from-your- girlfriend-from-on-top-of-the-Niagara-Escarpment-contest? Well,... it might just have also won the which-blackberry-can-surreptitiously-get-a-signal-at-39,000ft -if-you-hold-it-up-to-the-window-when-the-flight- attendant-isn't-around-contest.

Stayed tuned for the which-blackberry-can-get-a-signal-while-riding-past-a- classified-US-military-compound-in-the-middle-of-the-Mojave-Desert- and-getting-abducted-by-aliens-contest.