Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Day 22: Training Day

Today was a bit more down to business. I got up early due to the cot situation and our flatmates rescuing me from my restless slumber around 6:30AM. Sucks they have to be at their construction job by 7:30. Pretty brutal.

In the morning I made some good egg/ham sandwiches and hacked away at my computer for a while. By the end of the morning i was ready for a nice little run. I ran down to the waterfront, which was quite industrial and unattractive where we were, and back with Cary. My achilles felt particularly bad, but I persevered for 30min. We finished on a nice grass field though and,

I did about 45 min of stretching, core, balancing, and drills. Good morning. 30min, 4 miles RE.

After cleaning up, Cary and I investigated the downtown attractions of Dunedin (duh-NEE-din). We took a lengthy tour of Otago Museum, which was mostly devoted to the history of the Otago region. The museum wasn't really my cup of tea. For the most part it was devoted to "natural history", the ecological and geographical changes over the past millions of years. Right up Cary's alley though. I did learn that ancient Polynesians and Melanesians used to "bowl". And they also played darts. They were way ahead of their time.

We saw a large selection of exotic birds at the Aviary in the Botanic gardens and also traipsed around Otago University. Unfortunately, all students had already abandoned the college for their summer holiday two weeks earlier.  Oh, college students are "uni students". We also checked out my local store, and put our Carolla through the ropes on the world's steepest hill. It passed. Good thing, cause I don't know what we would have done if it didn't...

Around 5 we headed to the track for our workout at 6. For that hour I mostly just worked my achilles and soaked up the rays. Tony Rogers was calling for 8x300m@45,45,44,44,43,43,42,42 with 3min rest. I really don't think I want to be doing that much speed work and I know I have a bit of a weakness in the tempo range (maintaining speed for an extended period of time), so I decided to fall back onto the Mitch special. Aerobic Base for 30minutes. I ended up running 27:40 and finished with a 5:12 mile. Here's how it broke down:

1.5 mile warm up.

5:22 mile on the track followed by 5:30ish pace (faster effort) running a 2.2k loop around the complex twice. Then I came back in and finished with a 5:12 mile on the track. In total, the distance was probably just under 5 miles/8k.

1.2 mile cool down.

I didn't push and run another 800m as I didn't want to put too much strain when I was tired on my achilles and I was happy to do a little less looking ahead to the 5k this weekend. Other positive was I did it in trainers, so a good flats workout would be a bit easier. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

7.5 miles

Grabbed some food and got another great night's sleep in the comfy bed.