Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Can I Call It Twenty-ten?

Astute readers of this blog may notice that I haven't missed any days yet. I certainly would have had there not been the need to keep track of my training. Today was as close as I come to an off-day though. I just wanted to rest and relax and get ready for an awesome night on the Mount. That's Mt. Mangonui beach.

Training consisted of just a light upper-body strength routine. Light because I had no weights and was therefore quite limited in my options. I did a bit of stretching as well.

Look at all the peeps. It goes on like that for miles.

C ary and I got dropped off at the beach at noon and wandered around, soaking up rays, and watching parents throw their baby girls into beauty pageants. Oh actually, side note here: there were something like 18 contestants in the "adult" pageant, 16 of them were slamming. However, 17 of them were dum as roks. I'm talking girls who answer questions like, "Who do you admire?" (you know, standard question you might have thought about before going up on stage in front of all your friends, possibly family, and a beachload of people) with a loooong silence. Long enough so that people are awkwardly looking around for clues and the MC is fumbling with mic and notes and mic again. Finally, "Brittney Spears!!!!". MC doesn't even bother to follow up with "why" and simply exhales a "Thanks Carly..." before moving on.

Williams gets a bad wrap for girls caring more about life than looks, but give me a girl that can creatively BS a question on the spot over a blond bombshell any day (Cary came up with a solid 4 hilarious answers before "Brittney" was fly). I lost interest as the show moved to "talents" and 5 of the first 7 pop-lock and dropped it (poorly) to  "Party in the USA". One other failed at the hoola hoop (her freakin' talent of choice) repeatedly before being clapped off by the MC. The last was the good egg who sang some Beyonce song comparatively well. She's the winner in my mind though I don't know who took the Miss Mangonui crown.

We regrouped back home for some dinner and a shower before heading out for our night of mayhem. And mayhem it was. Details are many and mature in content so I'll just abbreviate to saying we had a great time with a bunch of Tauranga Ramblers runners at one of their flats before heading to the beach for 3 different concerts, over 20,000 people, and a fireworks show at the stroke of midnight. The whole scene was quite overwhelming for a shy rural farmboy like myself. Eventually we made it back to the runner's flat (owned by a generous fellow named Clive) where we chatted the rest of the night away. I believe Cary finished up around 3:30 while I stayed up to walk through the general party aftermath to Burger King and back with Ian McDonald (different from host Ian Lawrence Carter). BK was an amusing disaster as you had to wade through doggie bags and burger wrappers to get through the door. Ah, young jubilant life. To bed at 4:30.