South

Before you get excited/disgusted, this blog post is not the antithesis response to the recent celebrity naming craze following the points of the compass.

I am back in the beautiful South, and close to the mountains, which are blanketed in heaps of snow, and seem to be begging me every day to explore.  I feel as though I have been doing heaps more running since I have been down here, and why wouldn't I, I have finished exams and uni for the time being, and I have an inspirational playground pretty much in my back yard.  Even when I don't make it onto the trails, being able to look at the mountains while I am road running is still thrilling!

Training ground

I keep forgetting it is colder here that it was up north, and even when it is a sunny, blue-skied day, I need to try to remember a hat and gloves, as even on a fast run, the cool air saps away my heat, and I don't warm up    a lot.  I am also very keen to invest in some more Icebreaker (or other sporting Merino wear), as I am finding the wool second to none for keeping me warm even in the snowiest conditions.

It is sunny and crisp here much more than it is grey and rainy, and every vista is picturesque...I suppose you are getting the idea by now, but I feel as though I have landed in some sort of running paradise.  Even on days that I don't intend to go running (like today), I find myself tangled in my ipod cable and jogging down the drive not to return for a couple of hours, it is so easy to feast on the alpine view and just let my legs do their thing.  The only thing that counts as a bit of a running-negative is that there are a lot less races available than there were in the North Island.  Later in the year though, and early next, there are some very exciting trail runs on the race calendar, so I have a lot to look forward to.

Waking up to this view is AMAZING

The area I now live in has a lot of gravel roads, and I am not talking about civilized chip-seal type gravel.  The road workers seem to have spread enormous loads of river bed in every direction, so my ankles and knees are getting a healthy workout on more technical terrain every day.  Incidentally this surface makes for very slow driving (if you don't own a Hilux), and my poor wee car is forced to crawl about at 40km/hr or risk loosing vast sections of it's underbelly to the gravel.

"We never grow tired of each other, the mountains and I" (Li Bai)