A cold blast
The temperature has dropped suddenly here in Auckland! Today’s run with my mate Peter was freezing but good. Conditions have been rather stormy with strong winds and occasional hail but the running must go on. . Here we are having a blast out in the cold:
As you can see, conditions were cold and wet but we were smiling! We did a nice 12km around town:
A run in Onehunga/Mangere
I’ve been considering doing the Onehunga Half Marathon in 2 weeks time as I feel that I could smash my half marathon PB right now. As such, I thought it would be a good idea to have a run of the course to see what it is like.
It’s on the other side of Auckland to where I normally run but it is quite picturesque as well:
The figure you can see on the left is my running buddy who was keen to try the course as well.
The course is flat and I suspect it would be very fast in a race:
We did 21.7 km in 2:01:22 which averaged out to about 5:36/km pace. I know my running buddy could have gone a lot faster but I had run for 6 days in a row and by the end of the run I’d done 78 km for the week. Needless to say I was struggling a bit towards the end of the run. To be honest I no longer really feel like running the official race after doing the course which is a bit of a shame. Maybe I’ll change my mind before the day.
Over the last 30 days I’ve averaged more than 10km a day so I think I’m doing alright with my running mileage! 
Contrasts
Yesterday’s run (that’s my running buddy):
Today’s run:
It doesn’t really matter what the weather is doing in Auckland I find. It’s still a beautiful place to run. 
Spring run
I must admit I’m loving our spring weather at the moment. It’s been a bit damp and overcast but that is really perfect running weather. I’m also really enjoying having a camera on my runs again. They’ve opened up part of the harbour area to the public so I went through it today. I thought I’d take a self portrait:
And I’ve also been loving the panorama mode on my camera:
I actually ran through that old shed in the middle of the photo above but forgot to take a photo from inside it.
I also ran past the marina. As you can see it’s very pretty out Auckland way:
Overall a very comfortable 12 or so km at an average pace of 5:31/km.
A good year so far
It’s been a very good year for running. One of my goals for the year was to run 2010 km in 2010. Well as of today I have run 2042.8 km in 2010 so I have well and truly exceeded my goal. 
I’m also getting quicker. Over the last week I ran 73.4 km in 6:57:29 at 5:42 / km. That’s only 1 second a km slower than my goal marathon pace so my aim of getting the 4 hour marathon in is starting to look a bit more concrete.
The eating is not going quite as well. I hit my goal about 3 months ago but have since slacked off a bit and regained about 5-6 pounds which I need to lose. I really need to lose a bit more weight before the marathon in December.
I’ve gotten my new camera so there will be a few more images from my runs. I took this panorama of the beach at Mission Bay as I ran past on the weekend:
It’s been rather wet but occasionally we get brief moments of sun:
There was a rather large earthquake in Christchurch over the weekend. Most of my family live there now but fortunately they are all ok. My parents were in Australia on holiday and only returned midnight last night. It’s going to be interesting to talk to them and see what kind of damage there house has sustained. Not the kind of thing you want after a holiday!
Daily Mile
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RoadID
