Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Call Me Chaffeeng

Training was going to be interesting today, no doubt about it. After yesterday's jellyfish scandal I was a little suspicious of the ocean and I thought I'd try out a different scene.

Ian recommended I try the local hot-pools (use thermal heat from hot rocks in the ground to maintain bathwater temperature). The depth turned out to only be about 5ft which was about 6 inches too short for me to aquajog comfortably. However, the bottom of the pool was pretty slick so it turned out I could do a bit of a pawing action and glide my feet along the bottom. This worked for about 10 minutes (pseudo-aquajog) until the balls of my feet started complaining (I have no idea why). So I transitioned to drills in the pool and lasted another 10 minutes before I realized I wasn't going to be able to survive (mentally) long enough to make the workout an effective aerobic stimulus. Plus, it was a beautiful sunny day, and my achilles felt great so I just put on shoes and got to it. 30min, 5.5 miles at 5:50 pace (cruising) ending at the pier.

Destination was the pier because I was curious as to whether I might see jellies at this (my normal) time. I hadn't the three previous sessions at noon. Hmm, yup, no jellies. So I jumped in and immediately started to get into a quick aquajog rhythm... in my running shorts.

Now many of you might know that I haven't always been a big fan of running shorts, much preferring soccer shorts and briefs (alright, even boxers sometimes). Recently though, I aquired my first two pairs of shorts and I've gotten pretty used to them at this point. I wouldn't say I prefer them, but I do feel more legit in them. However, Never. Ever. Wear ANYTHING with a liner in the ocean. Salt water instantly converts your comfy cradling liner into a coarse sandpaper edge strapped and clinging to your inner thigh. It took less 2 minutes for that chafing machine to work itself up to an uncomfortable level. So yeah, 2 minutes aquajog in the ocean. At that point, I realized "bad idea", and popped out, defeated for the day. It didn't stop there though. Oh no, you're stuck in those clingy skin-saws for the next half mile walk back home. Lets see, that's about 800 raw steps. Only solace: I didn't quite bleed. TMI, I know, ok moving on.

I did get in a good balancing/flexibility/core session that afternoon. Achilles thankfully no worse for wear (unlike other bits).