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Published: January 18th 2009
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Auckland 10K Run Finish Line
Looking forward to a sit down (N)
I began November with less discipline than could have been desired. The night of Friday 31st October should have been a quiet relaxing affair, as we were both entering the
Auckland Quarter Marathon on Sunday. However, it was the leaving party for Nigel, the guy who hired me into my current role and who I got on well with. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into detail other than to say that we had a great night of food and beer but at 5a.m., having bet all I was willing to on black jack in the casino, I couldn’t help but reflect that my preparation for the running could indeed have been better - as I was going to bed, I had to
get up in exactly 24 hours to head towards the starting line.
After some rice pudding at dawn on Sunday (Paula’s favourite race-morning breakfast) we walked to
Victoria Park, the location of the start and finish lines, and at 07h00 we were off. I had already prepared my excuses for not doing very well, so I may as well share the top 5 of them:
1. Playing football instead of training during race
week
2. The events of Friday night
3. My personal trainer not being present to encourage me
4. My failure to appoint a personal trainer
5. Wearing baggy football socks unlike everybody else in their tiny running socks
My “good” time target for 10km was 1 hour, and “very good” target was 55 minutes, and I finished at 55 mins 14 seconds, which I was happy with because the distance was actually
10.6km. Paula finished at 1 hour 03 mins, beating her practice run by almost 10 minutes, which probably says more about her training than anything but anyway we both decided that now we are ‘in the zone’ and will try for the full marathon in the next 12 months if we are still here. There was something of a festival atmosphere in Victoria Park after the running, as the sun came out, music was playing, low carb beer was handed out and the air smelled of burgers. We went for a sauna to help our muscles.
The second weekend in November was a great one for us. On the Saturday, we boarded a boat to
Waiheke Island, in the Hauraki Gulf about half an hour away
by ferry from downtown Auckland; its relaxed pace, picturesque beaches and bays, plus slightly better climate, make it a great escape from the city. In its 93 sq km there are also 24 vineyards mostly producing premium wines, which was one of the motivating factors to go there. The trip to Waiheke was a birthday present to me from Paula and it was worth waiting till now for the good weather, as Spring kicks in.
It was beautiful sunshine on the ferry through the blue water, past some of the 47 volcanic cones that dot the city, and fairly smooth to get to the middle of Waiheke by bus to
Stonyridge Vineyard, one of the oldest wineries on the island, and on whose very short tour we saw their tiny cellar of good stuff, and tried 2 admittedly very delicious wines, as well as inspecting their vines and olive grove, and a cork tree (all was in order). We hung on after the tour was finished to try another wine and sun-bask on the terrace overlooking the grapes and the Stonyridge mountains.
Next door to Stonyridge was a wineyard-cum-microbrewery (
Topknot Wines and Waiheke Island Brewery), where it was
Among the blooming poppies
Rangihoua Estate, Waiheke Island more of the same, but this time including ale, and we tried 4 of each. It was turning out to be a great day.
We ended up at an
Olive Festival at
Ranghoua Estate, a small place with a grand name. They had managed to get nine other olive oil producers to come along and offered samples of all, some infused with lemon. We both have a strong aversion to olives but are ok with the oil, and didn’t know there was so much variety. We ended up buying a bottle from a friendly old dude at a company called Putiki Bay, the oil being made from 100%!t(MISSING)he same variety of olive (called Koroneiki), which did seem to have an unusual peppery taste. The highlight of the olive festival was lying in the sunshine in their large garden, with mountains and a poppy hill providing the natural borders, drinking more wine and listening to the live jazz, an absolute highlight of which was a choir’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah. You can here a version of this on YouTube
here.
On that theme, we were at a Scottish Presbyterian church for November’s
Remembrance Sunday. There is no
Manure for sale
Good recycling practices, Waiheke Island custom of wearing poppies here in NZ but for the morning service there was a bugle player and a reading of the moving passage ‘We will remember them’ by a remaining WW2 survivor, whose face still bore the blisters of sun and sand-fly exposure working on the railways in west Africa in the middle of the last century.
Later on we went to see
The Phantom of the Opera at Auckland’s main theatre,
The Civic. This was my birthday present to Paula. There were a few too many songs for my liking but Paula enjoyed it, so that was the main thing. Not feeling like cooking dinner afterwards, we went to New Zealand’s proud gourmet burger chain,
Burger Fuel. Classy no, tasty oh yes.
November also saw a change of government here in NZ. Out went Labour, who’d been in charge for several terms, and in came National, run by a former banker.
(P)
Another Saturday, we were taken on a great personalised tour of the highlights of
Auckland Museum by Heni, a friend of ours who volunteers there. The building graces the city skyline, standing on a hill (formerly a Maori
‘pa’ (settlement)) in
Nick outside Auckland Museum
It was built on a former Maori 'pah' hill settlement the middle of Auckland Domain, a park that offers welcome greenery and shade from the concrete and bright sunlight down near the harbour. One of the displays was a life size replica of a recently excavated T-Rex in the USA!
Our first trip to the Auckland’s answer to Wembley, the
Vector Arena, was one Saturday night for a
Dance Party where DJs took to the decks in three different rooms. The music was pretty good, despite us thinking it would be hard to beat the “classic” dance tracks of the nineties!
The following day, Queen Street (think Oxford Street equivalent) was lined with expectant crowds hours before the Annual
Santa Parade even began. As the floats started appearing we got a bird’s eye view of them from our balcony and headed down to ground level (briefly!) to see what all the fuss was about. I felt sorry for Santa having to out up with the heat in his woolly “winter” suit!
On one of the later November weekends, we headed off to Auckland’s west side into the
Waitakere (“Wai-ta-kiry) Hills on an away weekend as part of the
Alpha Course run by a local church. Most of the
people who went were from another bigger church but we were made very welcome, and had a great time with them all.
The end of November was also Nick’s work
Christmas Party; his company hired a boat which sailed out into the Hauraki Gulf, just off Auckland. The weather was beautiful and the good times apparently continued into the evening in some of the city’s bars, where not even a brief stop at a karaoke bar could ruin the proceedings.
People at work have started writing Christmas cards which, illustrated with sun-kissed beaches, deck chairs and boats, look very funny to me being a Northern hemisphere-ite!
*****
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