2007 - the year so far.

Welcome to 2007.

The year so far has been OK. I did not take holiday time from work so have attended the office a few times. I have actually been busier than anticipated so did not get through much of the work I planned. But that is not entirely unusual.

As is tradition in New Zealand the weather over Christmas/new Year is arse, this year was no exception though it was less arse than it could be. On New Years Day we went up to Army Bay to go snorkelling as youngest son (13 years old) has a real bug for it now and Goat Island is too far to go to all the time. The weather was not the best and there was a bit of chop at Army Bay, we could see OK but there was just nothing to see which was a shame. We swam around for 30 minutes before youngest started to get cold – and he has a wet suit as well !. Once we got out of the water and changed it rained really heavily. We went home soon after that !

The following day we took youngest son and his mate down to the Karangaheke gorge, about an hour and a half drive south east of Auckland. The day was much nicer than New Years day and we had a pretty good drive there. The walk is quite nice, includes an old train tunnel that is over a km long plus numerous caves to explore. I took a lot of photos on the new camera but deleted most in the end. The camera is so different to my old SLR from 20 or so years ago, it is going to take me a while to work out all the functions.

I worked the next 3 days.

Last Saturday we went back up to Goat Island for another snorkel, though the sun never really came through the cloud so it stayed quite cool and the water lacked the clarity from two weeks ago. Had a fun snorkel around and came home early.

Sunday I was up at six and down to the waterfront for a 21 km run. The weather was almost perfect for running, light cloud and sunny patches, not too cold, though there was a reasonable breeze that moved around a bit. I parked at the St Heliers and ran from the changing rooms to The Strand, up through the domain, down St Stephens and Gladstone Rds back the The Strand and back along the waterfront to the car. The run went Ok, slower than I would have liked at exactly 2 hours, but I have not run that distance for well over a year and when I did run it I never ran routes with a hill like the domain… The main thing was I did not feel too bad, though I could not have run too much further. After the run I jumped into the sea for a cool down walk and dip before driving home.

For the last four weeks I have been, mostly, following quite a rigorous half marathon training program. I have not seen a program that has you running the distance twice before the event; normally you only ever do most of the distance prior to the big day. I quite like this new program ! In the next week or so I will start to check out the full marathon program as I am going to find that one tough.

My wife finished her degree at the end of last year and is now looking for a job, once she has settled into something I will review my own employment plans.

That’s about if for the start of the year, I have listened to some good music, read a couple of good books, seen some good movies, so all in all considering it has only been 8 days, 2007 has been good. I have some good things lined up, with a Marathon as my key physical goal and getting my photography going again to get my creative side working, rock on 2007. I even plan to ride the bike as much as I can without breaking the training program.

Bought the new Slayer CD as it was only $15, it is not too bad, certainly better than some of the other works. I have been after the last Mint Chicks CD but it was voted CD of the year for 2006 and has been out of stock ever since…

Oh yeah - I am back drinking coffee, though I have managed to keep it to 3 cups a day and only one ‘real’ coffee. The coffee reduction didn’t help my lack of sleep, today I am so tired…