Chris….

Here I go with my first blog. Like Aaron I enjoyed the sleep in this morning starting at 08:00 it is so much more civilised than 06:00 in the morning. We ran for time this morning which means that before we started we agreed that we would run for between 3 hrs and 3 hrs 30 min. We arrived back home on 3 hours 16 minutes which was just right. Apart from the heat I felt pretty good, I was quite dehydrated and thinking back I never took on nearly enough water for a run in such hot and humid conditions. We ran at a basic aerobic pace trying to keep our pulse rates down to a minimum, a good gauge for this is to run at a pace which you can hold a conversation, even going up the hills you need to cut back your pace enough so that you can keep that conversation going (harder than it sounds). Don’t know how far we ran probably about 30k, I am not really worried at this stage about distance we just need to get the time in our legs. Having a day off tomorrow my next post will be on Monday.

Later Chris

Man its nice not to have to get up at 5.30am for a long run! We kicked off at 8am today as Debs was working nights and we had a additional running partner in Mike join us looking fit and ready for a decent hit out. Off to let Sofie the horse out of her pen and then we turned and headed for the Peak and the dreaded Goat Track. It was getting warm by the time we hit the Peak and our new mate was feeling the pinch but we battled on and when we turned around at the top…no Mike! Back down and another loop of a slightly smaller track and off home, By now we were both losing a lot of fluid as the mercury headed towards the late 20’s and the Hawkes Bay sun beat down. Why we decided to move to the top of a hill is beyond me but I managed to negotiate that just and collapsed into the house. With the exception of a bit of dehydration I felt pretty good although I reckon I managed to drink half the Heretaunga water table. Next week Kahuranaki which I am really looking forward to…must be the sun. Off to buy some trail shoes today as I am sick of doing Christopher Dean impersonations. Kia Kaha Aaron

Backing up today after a 3hour run yesterday with Chris up the Peak, took it easy on the old boy as he wanted a quiet start to the week. 9.5km in just under an hour represented a bit of a slow run but it was good to run off the legs from Sunday and it was a good sweat out. We only have another two really long runs and planning another 3 hour run this Saturday and then hopefully a 3 1/2 to 4 hour run the following week. Must sort out some terrain shoes as I spent most of today stumbling and sliding about and can see myself doing an injustice which wouldnt be good timing. Until tomorrow.