Happy Halloween!

10K "Fun Run"

Kel and I spent the Labour Day weekend in Whakatane.

While we were there I needed to do my last long(ish) run before the Auckland Marathon next Sunday. So I thought I'd head over to Ohope beach on Sunday morning and do the Ohope Beach Walk 2 Health Challenge. The entry fee goes to a good cause (Bay Hospice), it was a nice day, Ohope is a beautiful beach, and they'd measured out a nice series of courses (3k, 5k, and 10k).

The only drawback was something my marathon training plan had warned me about: wasting the extra energy that builds up from the decreasing training mileage to go and run too fast on a useless workout.

But that won't happen to me I thought as I listened to the pre-event briefing, where they too said "this isn't a race, there are no prizes for coming in first, go out and have fun".

But sure enough, once the run started, I gradually accelerated and ended up running a PR in the 10K by nearly 2 minutes (if the course is accurate)! My time was 44:08 over a previous best of 46:02. So the course would need to be off by over half a K for that not to be some kind of PR.

Oops . . . Oh well, doesn't seem to have impaired me too much. I feel quite good today, so I suppose we'll see how a medium long, slow recovery run goes tomorrow.

By the way, here's Ohope beach . . . notice the miles and miles of beautiful sand and surf without a person in sight! You'll see a few more people in the summer, but it never gets near anything you'd call crowded.

Minnesota Absentee Ballot

I think I've now completed the process to submit my absentee ballot.

Minnesota made it quite easy . . . I was able to complete my request and overseas registration (FPCA) by scanning and emailing the documents to the Hennepin County election officials.

They acknowledged that when it was received, then sent me the ballot paperwork as PDFs via email.

Those then had to be printed, and snail-mailed back, but overall turnaround was about a week.

Now all that's left is watching the election coverage. I normally get all my U.S. news from The Daily Show and The Onion, but I'll be curious to see what TVNZ do for election night (afternoon for us).

https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/

https://minnesota.overseasvotefoundation.org/

Stolen Bike

Our shed was broken into the other night and my mountain bike stolen. Fortunately, Kel's bike was in my car at the time, so they only got one of two bikes out of the shed, but I'm still pretty annoyed about the whole thing. The police have been very helpful, they came out to fingerprint and everything, much better service than you'd get in the states for this kind of thing. But I'm not holding my breath.

I think we'll be moving all the toys down to Whakatane this weekend.

Damn this pisses me off! I liked that bike. :-(

By the way, if any readers are in the North Shore area and come across a dodgy bike sale, let me know if you see a black Giant XTC 3. It's got a couple of very distinctive features that I could identify straight away if I (or the police) can get a close enough look at it.

Darjit Bird Sculptures

I've made a couple of updates to Kel's site.
Last weekend we drove over to Katikati to drop off a couple of darjit sculptures she's just finished for the Katikati Open Air Arts festival.

The Hanging Bird has been in it's tree all week, but unfortunately, the Standing Bird was knocked over and damaged by volunteers as they were moving them out to the park for display in the morning. (Unbeknownst to us, they were moving all the sculptures from the park to a fenced in yard every evening, all but the Hanging Bird and some of the bigger ones anyway).

Unfortunately, that was the first day it would have been on display, and the day before the judging. Needless to say, Kel's not too happy about the damage, and definitely not happy that the Hanging Bird is out in the park all night by itself.

Hopefully, the damage is repairable, but it'll take time, and it may be a while before we have any pictures of it outside looking the way it should.