Wellington half

Today I ran in the Wellington Half Marathon. I mentioned that I was signed up in my post about the last half marathon I ran back in April. Unlike that race, which was all pretty last minute, I've had a couple of months to train.


The course was really nice and flat. It started at the Westpac Stadium, where incidentally I'd been the evening before to watch the Hurricanes (Wellington Super 15 rugby team) get beaten by the Crusaders. After heading through the centre of town, the route is around several bays out to the airport and then it looped straight back. This is the road I've done most of my training on, so I knew what to expect.

As we're now in winter I also had an idea what to expect weather-wise, and Wellington didn't disappoint. It was raining pretty heavily when we started, luckily that eased off for most of the race. There was a strong north-westerly, so as I came round a couple of the headlands it was head down and dig-in to keep moving forwards.


I'd decided to aim for a time of 1 hour 40, but wasn't sure if that was going to happen given the weather. In fact, I managed to get round in 1 hour 38 mins. Full stats on the race site. I ran with a pace team for about two-thirds of the distance and that definitely made it easier to keep on track.


Probably through a combination of the faster pace and the weather, it was a much tougher run than in April. As I type this I'm not feeling too bad, but will have to wait and see how mobile I am tomorrow. Really glad I managed my target time as that made the effort worthwhile.


Next decision is when/if to enter another race.

Picton and Queen Charlotte Sound

I've just spent a fantastic weekend over on the South Island. Today was a public holiday for the Queen's birthday, so I decided to take the ferry from Wellington over to the northern tip of the other island at visit the Queen Charlotte Sound.


Things didn't start too well early on Saturday morning. There are two ferry companies that travel across the Cook Straits and I turned up at the wrong one, close to the deadline for checking in. Luckily I did a quick dash when I realised my mistake and made it on board with no problems. 

Leaving Wellington behind

Entering Charlotte Sound

The ferry travelled up Charlotte Sound to Picton. A sound is different from a fjord I discovered this weekend, it's formed by rising sea levels and tectonic activity, rather than a retreating glacier, so now you know!

Picton harbour

I had just enough time to drop my bag at my hostel, and grab a quick lunch before being picked up for a wine tour of Marlborough. Along with a friendly bunch of Brits and Americans, I visited 3 different vineyards - Hunters, Forrest and Montana. At each we got to try a good selection of their wines, which made for a very relaxing afternoon. Just in case that didn't finish us off, the last stop was to try a range of liqueurs and spirits!


I spent the evening chilling out with other guests at the hostel - Tombstone Backpackers. During the evening it started to rain really heavily, which didn't bode well for my plans to spend Sunday hiking. I got up early and it was still raining. I considered sacking off the hike, but decided to man up. So I waterproofed by bag with a bin liner and a collection of freezer bags for valuables and got ready to get very wet. Everyone at the hostel thought I was a bit mad, including the owner who gave me a lift down to the waterfront in the pouring rain.


I was going to walk a section of the Queen Charlotte Track, which traces along the edge of the Sound. To get  out to the track takes about an hour on a water taxi. It was still raining and rough in places, but the sky was starting to look a bit lighter. We even got a rainbow at one point -

Just as the boat arrived at the landing point, the rain came to a stop. Incredibly the weather then held for the whole day. Given June in the southern hemisphere is the equivalent of December back home, this was really special. The walking was nothing compared to my last hike, especially as I was only carrying a day sack rather than full camping gear. I'd be worried about taking my Nikon because of the rain. I'm really glad I did, and I'll let the photos tell the story of the day -

Very happy (and dry) at the end of the day

Comedy

Over the last few weeks a comedy festival has run across New Zealand (it actually ended a little while ago, but I haven’t got round to blogging about it until now). It’s originally called the NZ Comedy Festival. 

Every night saw a host of different performances from stand-up through to comic plays at various venues around town. There’s a mix of antipodeans and comedians from further afield.

I made it along to three shows, each time with Angela, my comedy partner in crime from work. Here’s a quick run-down on what we saw and what I thought.

You can’t beat Wellington (on a good day) – this was a sitcom style show with a cast of 6. The setting was a coffee shop and the venue was a actual café, with the show carrying on between the tables, which was a nice touch. The plot centred on the owners of the coffee shop trying to cash in on the Rugby World Cup by becoming an official venue. They managed to achieve this through some underhanded means, but were then their plans fell apart. There were some really funny parts to the show, with lots of local jokes. But at times it was a bit slow moving and could have done with a bit more work on the script.

Mark Watson – the second show we saw was a Welsh stand-up. I hadn’t heard of him before, but he’s reasonably well known and has been on mock the week and other shows. His act was fantastic and had the whole audience laughing more or less non-stop for an hour. He had a very informal style, with lots of engagement with the audience and self-mockery. This was my favourite of the three gigs.

Jeremy Elwood – this was the final gig we saw and the tickets were free as a colleague had got hold of them from a newspaper giveaway and then couldn’t go. Elwood is a Kiwi comedian. He was the most political, making quite a few jokes about NZ current affairs and I was pleased to know what he was on about. He also did some guitar based comedy. Now I’m always quite dubious about this idea, although I’ve seen it a couple of times. His first two songs were ok, but nothing special. He then did a great closing piece where he improvised around a couple of members of the audience, with people shouting out different musical styles that he then performed the next part of the song in. It was a real feat to be able to do it that spontaneously and the audience weren’t generous with their suggestions.

It was a good festival and all the gigs seemed pretty much full. An annoying feature was that because they had several acts performing at each venue during the evening you were only let in just before it started and then herded out again right after the show, which got a bit frustrating. Aside from that, I really enjoyed it.

I’d heard that Kiwi audiences generally weren’t keen on the heckling/put down style of comedy that is common in England. Preferring a less confrontational, laid-back approach instead. I can hardly make definitive statements on the basis of two gigs, but they did both pretty much back that view up. 

Fame at last

Clearly this blog has more fans than I realised. My mum came across this in a shop on Sark -

The only explanation I can think of is that I already have my own line in merchandise ;-)

Paint party

On Saturday night I went to the Wellington leg of the Illuminate 2011 Paint Party tour. The basic idea is a rave in a warehouse with A LOT of neon paint. My flatmate Matt had gone along last year and had a great night and so I decided to go along with him and some of his mates.

Everyone turns up in white clothes and I'd be warned that whatever I wore would never be the same again. So on Saturday I headed into town and bought a cheap white t-shirt and a pair of £5 shorts. Another great suggestion was to put phone, money, etc in a zip-loc bag to keep them paint-free. That meant I was able to get some photos during the night (through the plastic bag and on my phone, so a quality is a bit low).

After some pre-drinks at someone's flat we headed over to the venue on the waterfront about 10:30pm. Everyone was dancing away dressed in white, which made for a pretty weird visual -

Then at midnight the paint hit (I think they were firing it from some big cannons and handing out tons of bottles of it) -

After raving away , chucking paint around and generally having an awesome time, we left a bit before 3. Here's the aftermath -

I jumped in the shower as soon as I got home and managed to get most of it off. Although people were still pointing out bits behind my ear 2 showers later!


I'm keeping the shutter shades (which started out white) as a souvenir -

NZ politics

I don't intend to post much about the politics out here (I can hear the collective sigh of relief). I have been stuck by how much action there has been in the few months I've been here. A few of the stories have been:

• An opposition frontbencher losing his position and standing down as an MP over an alleged sex scandal.

• Another MP quitting his party and going on to set up his own new party. The same MP is weighing up whether to resign his seat to force a by-election and then stand for re-election for the last 6 months of this Parliament.

• A successful coup changing the leadership of another party. This was led, very publicly, by the former leader of a different party, who isn't currently and an MP and wasn't even a member of the party when he took the leadership!

As far as I can tell, the election this year is probably the main thing prompting all the excitement. I think the electoral system, which is MMP (Mixed Membership Proportionality), also plays a part by making the role of smaller parties more important. Whatever the cause, it makes it interesting for a political geek like me.

Rafting at Rangatikei

With an unexpected forecast of sunny weather for the weekend, a few decided to go white-water rafting. Having looked at the rivers near Wellington and decided they were a little tame, we settled on heading to the Rangatikei river, in the centre of the North Island and about 3-4 hours out of Wellington. It ended up being 3 of us going - me, Harry and Joel from my team at work.


This was the first serious trip for my new car - haven't decided on the car's name yet - and it did a good job. The drive up on Sunday morning was pretty straightforward. Wellington is at the very bottom of the North Island and  getting to anywhere else is basically a case of working out whether you need to be on Highway 1 or Highway 2 and then how many hours to drive along it for!


Having said this, the last half hour of the drive to the lodge where the rafting company was passed took us down small, windy roads. The wind had been pretty strong and the road was littered with all sorts of bits of branch that had blown off trees and at one spot this entire sapling that forced us to stop and clear the road -

Having made it in one piece, the rafting lodge was a very slick set up. They cater for a mix of backpackers on the Kiwi Experience bus, tourists with more money and the occasional executive retreat. After a safety briefing and kitting us out with some stylish wetsuits and safety gear we were off for the short drive to the start point on the river.


We were the only three booked in for the trip, which meant we got a guide - Sam - and a safety kayaker/photographer - Ants - just looking after us. So the raft wouldn't be too light a backpacker who's been working casually at the lodge for a few weeks - Adam - also came along for the trip.

The conditions on the river were really good, rain over the last couple of weeks meant that the level was just right to be able to run all of the rapids. The set-up was nice as well, starting with a relatively calm stretch with a couple of Grade I and II rapids where we went through the basics of controlling the raft. There were then a couple of Grade III rapids before we got to 'the gorge' with the Grade IV and V rapids. All of this built up nicely and it was made it an adrenaline rush rather than absolute panic of a trip. 

It's been years since I last went rafting and I enjoyed it even more than I remember from my last trip. I'm definitely going to try and do some more while I'm out here.

Here's a couple of the photos taken as we went along -

LHS (Front to Back) - Adam, Harry, Sam
RHS (Front to Back) - Me, Joel

No idea how we avoided falling out here!

Finally at the bottom of the run there was a big rock to jump off into the water (which was bloody cold).

Not sure which of us this is, but we all did the jump

All in all a damn good day.