My turn in the rotation and greetings from the drizzly yet beautiful Auckland. My trip has entered the bell lap of a 1500m and all is going well. Home on Wednesday. I have used Skype almost daily to keep tabs on the family and it works so well. It makes the trip more tolerable to see my wife and Olivia in ‘live’ form.
Managed daily runs while (whilst?) in Sydney along the same bike path near the hotel. Out at 5:30 every morning which was nice as the heat came up quick to the mid 90’s. Wednesday flew to Melbourne, staying in North Melbourne, not the swankiest area but turned out to be a dream. My usual 5:30 run lead me to several parks near the hotel, one being Princes Park. Imagine my total surprise to find a great 3.1K gravel/packed dirt trail around the park and……..a 100+ runners out and about. I was stunned. Ran there both days and enjoyed the company of so many other runners. Melbourne is a great city, much more relaxed than Sydney. From a fashion standpoint, the leggy look is back and the local female population has grasped it completely and does their best to make the most of it…..and succeeding.
Saturday I took the Emirates Air flight to Auckland – great airline. The kind folks bumped me to Business Class for the 3 ½ hour flight. They served a great Sauvignon Blanc and I enjoyed gobs of it. They poured, I drank. Oh yes, my flight was at 8:00 a.m. so I had a great buzz going all morning. 600 channels of film and music so I settled into the complete ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ and kicked back. Arrived in Auckland, arrived at the hotel and decided to go for a quick 30 minute semi-buzzed run. Had to keep the running streak going of 7 days. No problems on the run and it might have helped sweating out the remaining alcohol.
This morning, was a great run in the drizzle along the waterfront and along the bay. Just beautiful. I imagined the great Quax and Walker had run this route many times. Each 1K is marked on the path and they just flew by. I’ve been following SoCalPete’s advice and have been running without a watch and enjoy the lack of a tether. Will run the route again tomorrow morning, just not as far. Am really pleased to have run daily outdoors and not on a treadmill, that was and is my goal on these trips.
Have a great week and “Post em’ up!”