An Auck Anniversary Day plod...

Monday 29/01/07:
The rain that had been forecast but never showed up on Saturday or Sunday arrived with a vengence late last night! It was bucketing down when I went to bed around midnight and it was accompanied by thunder and lightening. Fully expected it to still be hanging around when I awoke to my alarm at 7.30 this morning. Instead the sun was up and I was thinking I should have probably been up and running earlier! It was actually just after 8am before I got out the door - feeling a bit lazy this morning.

As yesterdays run was not really the "recovery run" that I'd had in mind - and being mindful of the great quote in the latest post on Ewen's blog - I decided today's run would definately be done at a very easy pace. I did a mainly flat 8km loop around the local streets and made sure I kept the pace slow. Have to say, it seemed to take forever and as I've said before, I just don't feel terribly comfortable body-wise, running at this pace. Sure my heart and lungs were happy - I felt like I was barely excerting myself - but my legs felt sluggish and after about 5kms my lower legs were rather achey. Still, keep it slow I did and still got very warm and sweaty, due to the temp.

Brisk walk warmup: 5mins
Easy paced run: 44mins (8km)
Brisk walk cooldown: 5mins

Have to say that the pace actually felt much slower than it was. So much so that I even re-measured the loop when I was out later on, but it is definately 8km.

Was back in the new shoes today, after doing my last couple of runs back in the old ones. On that note - I see in the latest edition of RW that the Nike Air Pegasus 2006 - the ones I just bought - have been awarded the RW International Editor's Choice Award. YAY - I will be telling them about this and then expecting them to run faster because of it!!

As soon as I got back from my run I had a bit of breakfast, then Courtney and I headed off to the pool. Despite it only being 9.30am, the public pool was packed. Fortunately the swim school pool next to it was open for lane swimming and they had a lane for "learning to swim" so we (she) could safely swim there without getting in anyones way. In fact a couple of times she almost mowed down a couple of adults who were in the lane and not exactly swimming, getting in her way...! Shes a pretty good little swimmer these days and I have to say, is fairly awesome at backstroke - but then she has had 4yrs of year-round swimming lessons!! However in a 25m pool, it still takes all of her puff to get to the end... but get to the other end she does, has a minute or two to rest, then comes back again. She managed about 10 lengths all up. After a while I started swimming beside her in the "slow" lane, so managed to get in a few laps of breaststroke and freestyle myself, but nothing serious. Then we had great fun over in the big pool, chasing her ball around and generally horsing about... She knows she has to be able to swim continuous freestyle laps to move up into "junior squad" which is why she wanted to go and "practise" ! This pool is not where she has her lessons tho, we go to a private swim school closer to home.

Rest of the day was spent shopping for school stationery and getting supplies for the kitten from the vet (for fleas) and petshop (collar, more toys, more food, more kitty litter, etc) Talk about cost a fortune and next week he will also be due for vaccinations. That reminds me - we had a bit of a problem with Baxter yesterday - seems he managed to get into Bungie's food, despite our best efforts to feed them seperately and keep him away from hers. The result was a kitten with the "trots" and alot of wind! And I have to say, it was the type of wind that could (and did) clear a room!! Had Courtney in hysterics of course... Good thing he is excellent at using his litter tray in the garage - but even emptying this was not a job for the weak of stomach!! Eeeeewwwwww!

Courtney and I also watched an awesome DVD today. She is dinosaur mad and had picked one called "Prehistoric Park." I don't know if anyone else has seen this - its a fictional movie but presented in documentary style as if it was non-fiction and I think it was as factually accurate as it could have been. Basically, a team of zoologists travel millions of years back in time to various locations and save dinosaurs, wholly mammoth, sabre-tooth tigers, hairy rhino, etc from the brink of extinction and bring them back thru a time portal to a "prehistoric park." It was extremely well done and even I was fascinated by it, so we sat and watched the whole thing - despite it being a double disc! It was obviously a series made for TV, as was broken down into 7 episodes. It was in the vein of "Walking with Dinosaurs" only it covered alot more than just dinosaurs. The grapics were excellent and if you are into this kind of thing, I highly recommend it. It was very educational but presented in an amusing and interesting way, Courtney was simply fascinated and has talked about it ever since. We saw the "Dinotopia" series of movies a while back, which were good, but those are fantasy rather than factual.

I also see the Feb RW has an article on GPS gadgets and reviews four of them. I have yet to devour the whole article, but have decided I am definately getting one, so this is timely for me. Just need to do some research and find out how much it is going to set me back, then go for it!