Another Lifecycle challenger had to pull out on Tuesday due to a knee injury but the rest of the team are faring well in spite of the continuous problems.

The route has presented challenges at every turn. One section of the road was so dark that the back up vans had to drive behind them to light up the way, while a section of off-road was much harder than expected.

The cycle lane in one tunnel was so narrow and the traffic so heavy that the cyclists had to be ferried through while another tunnel had no lanes at all.

The greatest aggravation has been the traffic, with the route going through huge towns with multilane highways passing overhead and traffic lights every 100m.

Although the route had been checked during a visit months before, it needed to be tweaked as the accommodation was confirmed - which took much longer than normal because of the difficulty in finding contacts.

Monday was a record 274km route which saw the cyclists coming in at around 11pm after over 17 hours on the road, with Wednesday's route taking them up 1,500km in the mountains surrounding Mt Fuji.