Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Day 10: Full Nelson

As the title suggests, Nelson (which was a generally positive experience) did throw us several curveballs. I must also admit, the first few titles I came up with were far too likely to come from the mouth of Steve Rubin for me to grace the general public with. "Epic Fail" and the like... Anyways, these failures were:

The Big Tahuna (pre-dance)

• We took two tours of the park before finally finding the “athletic track” for our workout.
• The Hostel was out of bulk rooms so Cary and I ended up getting a twin, which is very different from a “double”, something we almost took by accident. You can imagine one is far more romantic than the other.
• We went to the coast to pamper ourselves with a nice seafood dinner. We had 3 restaurants targeted. Let's see, the first had the doors ominously closed with no sign. But we heard laughter from within. After a moment we saw balloons leading around back. When we made it inside we discovered a lovely wedding party. Sadly we weren’t invited, and a bit under-dressed to look inconspicuous. We griped about the lack of a sign and wandered down the boardwalk to place number 2. We started chuckling at our bad luck when we saw “For lease” signs outside a really rather nice, modern looking restaurant. Place #3 didn’t actually exist, error in the pamphlet we were referring to? Cursing nothing and everyone at the same time, we walked into an Italian shore-side bar where we heard general merriment. Cary laughed, “Watch this be booked for a funeral...” He should have knocked on wood.  Dejected and dour (you who know me know that only Brooks can get more spiteful when frustrated), we darkly rode back into downtown and stopped at a supermarket. I must admit, picking out food in a supermarket while chomping on an apple can really lift the spirits. We got a 12 pack of Monteiths, one of the smoothest beers I’ve ever had, and headed back to the hostel to cook up our pasta dish which turned out to be an amazing success… Well that has to be a bullet point record.
• Nelson claims to have a population of 60,000. You’d think on a sunny Saturday night things would be hopping. Well, it turned out that the streets were rather tame, and old. Old people that is. Oh well, to bed at midnight but several drinks and good conversations in. Found out about some of Cary’s Australian adventures.
• Cary wanted to get his haircut. Well, in Nelson, 4/5 places were closed on a Saturday afternoon. The last was a salon which was predictably booked through.

To add to the list of woes, training was, personally, a failure for me today. Turns out that I don’t have the mid-range speed I feel I should have right now, at least compared to Cary.

Workout in Nelson

Workout was 5x1000m 5min rest (600 jog).

I ran 2:46, 2:44, 2:48, 2:46, 2:49. Cary led all but the second one and demolished me with a 2:43 on the last.

Slow cooldown.

7 miles

I did get to meet Greg Laugenslauger who has an amazing athlete success rate with only 5 years of coaching in nelson. He’s sent 5 Nelson boys to D1 schools in the states on running scholarships (note the population of Nelson above… amazing).

Biggest highlight was definitely The Big Tahuna at Tunahuahu Beach. Awesome bands and some great atmosphere. It was also my token burning for the season. I knew it was coming this time though and wisely spent only 15min in the open sun. As I write this I'm positively glowing. But it's the good kind (I know there are many out there who would argue this into the ground with me). We slept really well in our twins.