Clarification/confession

I am really pleased that through this blog I have able to show people of the other side of the world this amazing country I live in. I have always enjoyed the outdoors, but have never been "outdoorsy" and over the past few years as I have become more active (and also as I have grown up) I have definitely found a new level of appreciation for the different types of countryside I get exposed to here. I now understand why my parents' slide shows contained so many "boring" nature/scenery shots! On a good day, I can barely walk 100m without stopping to take a picture, and when I don't take my camera on a workout (i.e. most of the time...) I'm always wishing I had it!

However, New Zealand is not paradise. Not by a long shot, so while you should all come visit, come for breathtaking scenery, bungy-jumping and Ironman. Don't come to laze on the beach and soak up the sun :-) It does get warm, sometimes, in summer. But not super hot, in most places. And we're right under an ozone hole, so sunscreen is a MUST, even when it looks awful. And it doesn't get very cold in winter (in Wellington, at least). But there is nowhere here that's warm all year round, nowhere you can guarantee summer actually coming (the number of summer holidays I have spent shivering in tents listening to the rain..) Although in lots of cities it doesn't snow, it does get cold in winter. Cold rain. Cold cold winds. Cold hail. And in most places there's no fall to speak of, no real spring.. We came home from a part of the country with better weather than Wellington the other week to discover that while we were gone, the temperature in Wellington was 10 degrees C (50F). That ain't summer!

I'm not trying to run my city or my country down too much- just trying to project a more balanced picture. And I certainly haven't been trying to paint it as a tropical island when it's not- it's just that I'm hardly going to take photos of the crap days!

Time trial..

I warmed up for my time trial today by jogging to the track and trying to keep my HR between 146 and 156 (my target HR based on Maffetone's formula). It was surprisingly easy, and I spent less than 2 mins out of zone in total, which I was happy with. It was about 3.2 miles and I did it in under 30- that's all I know, but not a bad effort at my target zone.

The time trial was less successful. I took off too fast (waaaay too fast) and was gasping before I was halfway round the first lap. I'd never run on the track before and I didn't really know how to get the right pace. I *think* I did about 1400m in the 6 minutes. Not quite what I had planned, but there's room for improvement and I think it's a reasonable indicator of where I am for training purposes.

P and I decided it was too gorgeous and sunny to go home and cook (plus we had errands to run and wouldn't have been home until after 8 anyway) so we got some woodfired pizza , salad and strawberries and sat on the grass. Ah.. I love summer.

PS: For Aleks- this is the view from my house of my run on Saturday:



We ran from our place down the hill and along the coastline past the airport in this pic. In the second pic you can see the trail we ran along, and the coastline you follow back round towards our place.