Riding super-fast...

I took a video of my ride to work today, using my phone. Just because. After compressing roughly 15 minutes worth down to just over a minute, this is the result. I think it's kind of cool.

(It's funny how close the cars look when things are sped up 10x faster than real life!)

Ready, Steady, Go...

On the weekend, I initiated the start of birthday party season for our family. Joanna's birthday isn't till the middle of August, but I have learnt that it is best if I start thinking/planning/gathering stuff now. If you've read this blog in previous birthday seasons, you will know that I really enjoy the creative side of planning kids birthday parties. Joanna has decided she will like a fairy birthday party this year. She had and angel/fairy party for her 2nd birthday, but she was a little young then to really remember it and although I might use a couple of the food ideas again, I'm going to go with a more fairy garden theme for the decorations and will also have some kind of fairy activities this time too. Time to get inspired...

Day and night

Peter and I have been noticing quite frequently in movies and TV shows the totally unnatural switches between daylight hours and night in scenes. Such as the incident which causes the car chase happens in broad daylight, but when they cut to the chase scene it is suddenly the dead of night. I was just watching an episode of Cops LAC and a similar thing happened, the homeless guy and the cop get shot in broad daylight, but they then cut to the scene with the paramedics are in attendance and it is suddenly pitch black with torches and spotlights. This also happens with the weather too in these types of scenes - the start of the drama starts in fine sunny weather, but suddenly turns into rainy weather when there wasn't even a cloud in the sky a minute ago.

no computer

Staying home from church today as I still have a cold. Was going to make a start on writing kids church material for next term, but i have no computer to work on as Peter has taken both the netbook and our big computer screen to do the kids talk. My phone is my only connection to the outside world and isn't suitable for the task.

The ironic thing is that Peter just called and the cable needed to connect the network and big screen together has been left at home. Church needs to invest in a data projector...but that's a whole other story.

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Book depository dilemma

Yes, the price of books at the book depository is cheaper than buying them from any bookshop in NZ (online or in person).

Yes, the book depository has free shipping to NZ.

BUT...

Buying books from the book depository still costs money...money which I don't have!

Books, books, books

So many great children's chapter books that I'd love to read with my kids. Where will I find the time to read them all? With school drop off/pick-up, kindy days, nightly readers to listen to, getting the kids to bed early because they are dead tired, there isn't much time left for sitting/lying around reading cool chapter stories together. Ben and I got to read some Nanny Piggins this afternoon - the first time this week that we've had time. I'd like to do it more often than once a week.

Need practice

We bruleed the top of two of our creme brulees last night - using the blow torch I'd got for Christmas. The one I did I totally burnt the sugar, Peter did a bit better (he went second so was able to learn from my mistakes). I think the big thing we need to figure out is how much sugar to put on top to melt for the brulee, so we get a decent layer of toffee, but don't burn it - the amount the recipe states is way too much, hence why mine burnt so badly. We still have 6 more ramkins of creme to practice bruleeing on, hopefully by the last one we will have a decent technique (we've now watched a couple of YouTube videos to get some tips).

Getting worse

Yesterday, I thought my cold was getting a little better. Today, I am feeling worse - back to aching body, really tired and now a blocked nose has been added to it (which made sleeping in the early hours of this morning very difficult).

Bike update

We now have 4 bikes with 5 helmets for 5 bike riders...And we have all ridden home from school/kindy once. Naomi was freaked out in her bike seat at first, but she has now gone on handfull of bike rides and is used to the way it feels and now enjoys going on bike trips with me. Joanna is still getting used to her new bike (an early birthday present as she was too big for her old bike), so is fairly slow, but I'm sure she will get faster with a little bit more practice (growing a little taller will also help!). It is great to be able to leave home only 5 minutes before school ends and still be there on time and not have to worry about finding a parking spot. The ride home is taking longer than it would to drive at the moment, but I envisage with a bit more practice we will get it down to being comparable to driving.

MasterChef challenge

Even though Peter will be annoyed by being mentioned in the same sentence as MasterChef, I think he achieved MasterChef status last night. Because of my cold I haven't done some of the cooking I had planned to do this week and some of the ingredients were reaching their used by date. So last night Peter made both creme brulee and coconut cakes - and all of it turned out perfectly. The ladies at Bible study thought the coconut cakes were divine (they had a dark chocolate glaze on them which I had added this morning - needed to be done when the cakes wer cold) and the custard I licked out of the pot from the creme brulee tasted fantastic too (we will taste the final product with blow-torched sugar top tonight for dessert).

Candle lit lunch

Having a candle lit lunch with the girls, cloudy and rainy so it's a bit dull in the dining room even with the curtains open. We decided it wasn't dull enough to turn the lights on, but decided a candle would be a nice touch.

Cold

I've had 2 colds in a row, this 2nd one has been worse than last week's one. Hence the silence - just been trying to get through the days.

Back-to-front Friday

Mel was planning on making doughnuts for afternoon tea on Friday... but ended up running a little late, so they were only going to be cooked just before dinner, meaning dinner wasn't going to be cooked in time. Anyway, instead of just not having them, she decided to do dinner back to front - dessert first, followed by main course. And just to make that exciting, the kids got to dress inside out as well - singlets on the outside, pants inside out etc. They ended up very excited by the whole idea - and had a great time having to finish their dessert before they got their dinner!

Escapee!!

I just had to go and recapture one of our pullets! It had flown over our fence into our neighbours yard (they were kind enough to come around and alert me to the fact we had a chook on the loose). So I went round, and chased it around their yard for a couple of minutes (in an attempt to catch it), when it decided to trot down the footpath to the next property along. It was in the next property that I was able to pin it down and carry it home. It's punishment for escaping was that I clipped it's wings (which I will need to do to the other 2 pullets tomorrow morning - they have been growing up nicely and along with this their flight feathers have already grown back again!).

Literacy learning curve

After helping out in Ben's class for a couple of weeks, it was apparent that the teacher is using the time to get me to help the kids that are struggling with literacy (both reading and writing). As most of you will know I come from a math/science background, so after making some observations about the children's literacy skills, I decided to to a bit of research of my own into strategies I could use with those struggling with early literacy skills. Around the time Ben started school I started reading Trevor Cairney's blog (through links from Nicole's blog) about literacy and learning, so this is where I have started my research and through his posts and links to other research papers etc. I've discovered a couple of strategies that I can easily implement. These include reading to the children each week (I'm starting with 'Fantasic Mr Fox' by Roald Dahl), as well as doing a Digital Language Experience Approach (D-LEA) where the kids will make their own digital story books (like early readers with pictures taken with digital camera and an accompanying line of text/caption for each written by the kids). So in colaboration with the teacher I am going to do these activities, as well as work on activities which will help the kids improve their fine motor skills in a fun way (eg. spelling words by making the letters out of playdough, spelling letters on the ground using water and paint brushes etc.). I'm enjoying learning a bit more about literacy and helping these kids to engage with learning and improve their skills. As a middle school teacher I have seen a number of kids who struggle with literacy, but by that age have just given up on trying to learn. So to be able to help some of them at an early age when I am able to help them engage with literacy and develop a self motivation to learn (to develop life-long learners to use the 'catch phrase) is worth the time.

I love Nanny Piggins

I have started reading 'Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan' (by R.A.Spratt) with he kids this week and I'm loving it. It is funny and silly and surprising. Ben is enjoying it too.

Bike seat mounted

Finally have Naomi's bike seat mounted securely on my bike. Was able to swap the mounting bracket yesterday morning. Now we need to sort out the helmet issue.

Bike dramas

In an effort to get ourselves bike mobile we have been encountering a few dramas with purchasing bike accessories...

We ordered some bike helmets online for Joanna and Naomi. The website clearly stated that the XXS/XS size fit 48-54cm diameter heads. When we receive them, they clearly say they are 50-54cm size, which is too big for the girls. So after an email of complaint the company said we could post them back and get a full refund, but it wasn't until we pushed them that they actually paid for the postage it was going to cost to return them!

The second drama is with the bike seat for Naomi. We bought a front mounting Bobike seat off TradeMe, but the standard mounting bracket that came with it doesn't fit my bike. Anyway, somebody in Hamilton just started selling new Bobike seats on TradeMe soon after we bought the 2nd hand one. So we bought a different bracket (ATB bracket) that is suppose to fit all bikes, but it doesn't fit either of our bikes! I had tried yesterday afternoon to fit the bracket, but couldn't get it to work, so I got Peter to help me last night and we concluded that the whole design of the bracket is dodgy so you can't tighten it sufficiently to be secure for the weight that a child sitting in the seat puts on it. So I now have to go and swap the ATB bracket for a new 'standard' bracket (the new standard bracket does fit my bike - it is a different design to the old standard bracket that came with the seat we bought).

Yesterday afternoon would have been a perfect day to ride to school for pick-up. Annoying, as the number of days suitable for riding is going to be very few for the next couple of months.

We have our first pullet egg!

Peter found the first one in the chook house this morning.

How do we know it's from one of the pullets and not the old chooks? It is a fairly small egg (medium/size 5 size) and chooks as they get old lay bigger and bigger eggs as their egg tube gets stretched (the over simplified explanation), so they lay x-large/size 7 eggs and they have bumps on them due to damage to their egg producing bits/their body's egg producing functions not working as well anymore.

So we are very excited as this means that we will be starting to get at least 3 eggs every day soon!

Broken...

Turns out that Naomi's injury from last week was more serious than the Dr assumed. She's been limping for a whole week now and she is still flinching when we tough her leg. So I took her and got it x-rayed this morning which clearly showed a break in the fibula (don't have a copy of the images to put up). After a chat with the drop-in doctor at the medical centre, we went off to the hospital to get more doctors to have )a look and ask lots of questions. Mainly because I didn't actually see how Naomi hurt her leg, I can only take an educated guess at when it happened and what happened (I thought she may have fallen off the couch) and my 'educated guess' about what happened is consistent with a fibula fracture.

Result...No cast needed as it isn't a weight bearing bone and she can continue to walk on it , it will just continue to hurt for a couple of weeks. And the 'boss' doctor at the hospital, has his own educated guess as to what happened...either she was running along, fell and twisted her leg or she was mucking around with Ben and he accidently landed on her leg.

Fingers crossed

Kitchen scales battery died while I was measuring the water for the bread. Hope we don't end up with a brick!

My first day at school

Today, I went and helped out in Ben's class for the first time. First I was cruising the classroom helping the kids with their writing task (writing about a puppet show they had seen this morning). Then the teacher got me to work with some of the kids who were struggling with their reading. I'm planning to go every Wednesday morning between morning tea and lunch.

Reasons I've decided to do this:

• As a teacher I know how difficult it can be dealing with such a wide range of ability levels, so being able to split up the class a bit is beneficial for all the kids both those who are at the top end and those at the bottom end.
• It gives me an opportunity to get to know Ben's teacher better.
• I get more of an idea of what Ben does at school.
• It gives me an opportunity to get to know the other children in Ben's class.
• I enjoy teaching and like the opportunity to get back into the classroom.

Injured, but not bad

Yesterday, we noticed that Naomi had a sore leg. She would whinge whenever we touched it and whenever we tried to take her shoes on or off. She also had a slight limp, favouring the non-sore leg when walking. So I took her to the Dr this morning to check that it wasn't anything serious. Dr said that she wasn't displaying any of the classic symptoms of a fracture and so it is probably just a sprain. Although if she has a high pain threshold, it may be a break, so he gave me an x-ray referral that I can use if we are still worried in a few days.

How to run a marathon

Someone (you know who you are!) asked me recently if I followed a training program of some sort to prepare for marathons... short answer: no, I don't.

Longer answer:

I don't really like the idea of strictly following someone else's program... as such, I'd much rather understand how training works and come up with something that makes sense and works for me. Having a young family, I also don't have the time to strictly follow any program - some weekends just won't work for a long run, so the flexibility to do what I can when I can rather than what the program says is good! So, here's some points that guide me in that process:

1. Listen to your body. This is probably the most important: if you're running and your knee is hurting, it's telling you something. Perhaps your shoes are wrong. Perhaps you've been running on the one side of the road too much (camber can cause injury!). Perhaps you've increased your distance too quickly recently. Or perhaps you're just soft and should toughen up. You need to work out which is true!
2. Build slowly. Most people would say that you shouldn't increase your weekly distance by more than 10%. I agree. So if you're starting with a base of one 5km run/week, it's going to take a while to get up to running 5km/day! If you increase distance too quickly, you'll probably end up injured.
3. Total mileage. In preparing for a marathon, you need to get your legs used to running. Lots. And the easiest way to do that is to run as regularly as you can, rather than longer runs less often. Running 15km once a week is not going to be enough - running 8km five times a week gets far more miles into your legs, which I see as important.
4. Long runs. These are probably the toughest thing for me to fit in: ideally, I'd like to do around 6 runs between 28 and 32km. I don't think I've yet achieved that for any of my marathons so far. I don't think going beyond 32km is a good idea - you end up taking too much out and not being able to train properly for a week afterwards. But you do need to get up around that 30km mark to get used to being on your feet for a long time, as well as building mental strength.

There's plenty of resources out there to help: I have an old edition of Noakes' classic - it's great. Coolrunning is a forum with plenty of experienced runners that dispense useful advice, along with some that will tell you you're doing it wrong, regardless of what you're doing. Lots of stuff to filter through.

So there you go, that's what I can think of for now - and obviously take any of this with a (large) grain of salt - I'm a marathoner that is yet to be entirely happy with any of my marathons!

Where are the eggs?

We are still struggling with our egg supply - our new pullets are still not laying yet. Which means baking stuff is getting put on hold because there is not enough eggs - I wanted to make an apple and blueberry cake last night to use for Peter and the kids morning tea, but it needed 2 eggs and we only had 2; plus there is a Key lime slice that I have been wanting to make for about a month now (limes are currently in season here), but we never get enough eggs for me to make it (it need 4 eggs). To relieve this situation we have resorted to buying a carton of eggs now and then to get us through this time. Unfortunately Peter forgot to buy a carton on the way home from work yesterday (they were on special until last night), so I will have to wait until I go to the markets on Sunday to boost our supply. And I really hope these new chooks start laying soon!

I'm back

Today, I did my first pump class in two and a half years. The last time did a pump class was back in Brisbane before we moved to NZ. There are some obvious reasons for having some time off - pregnancy and having a young baby. But I have also found going to a class at my current gym fairly intimidating - it is a small room with only 1 single door which means you enter into the middle of the room; most of the people who do the classes seem to know each other well and the instructor knows them; the number of people in the classes is really small (like today there was 7 people compared to the 20-30 people that were in the classes I went to in Brisbane); and they don't run my favourite class (BodyAttack) and also the class on one of the days I go is a boxing based one, which I'm not interested in at all. Before the holidays I had been thinking I would like to start doing some classes again as I know I do a more intense challenging workout in class than on my own. And it was raining today, so I couldn't go outside running and running on a treadmill didn't enthuse me, so I plucked up the courage and stepped into the fitness class room.

Seeing as I hadn't done a class for a long time I only put 4kg on my bar and used the same weight for all the sections. I think I will need to increase the weight for the legs next time, as well as for the biceps.

Camping and tramping in the Kauaeranga Valley

(Finally added some pictures so I could post this!)

Naomi had her turn tramping with Dad first, then Joanna had her turn. Over the Easter weekend, it was Ben's turn. We decided that we may as well make a weekend of it and camp in the Kauaeranga Valley (inland from Thames at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula) for a few nights as well. I took the Thursday off so we didn't have to wrestle with traffic or worry about getting a camping spot. As it turned out, there were very few people there the whole weekend, so there wouldn't have been any issues getting a camping spot anyway! There's 8 campgrounds to choose from, spread up the valley - on the advice of the staff at the visitor centre, we chose Wainora campground. It turned out to be a pretty good choice - we were very happy with it.

The weather was forecast to be a little miserable (drizzle, periods of rain etc), but it never really got that bad until the final morning when we were packing up anyway.

Thursday was spent setting up (Mel and I) and running around the campground like crazy chooks having lots of fun (the kids). Friday we went for a couple of little walks (Edwards Lookout and the Kahikatea walk) in the morning and relaxed around the campground in the afternoon. Each evening we had a campfire as well, so the kids got to toast marshmallows for the first time!

On Saturday morning, Ben and I left for our tramp up to the Pinnacles Hut: it's rated as a 3 hour walk, so we left around morning tea time to give us plenty of time to get there without having to rush at all. Ben enjoyed the walk, and (surprisingly) didn't mention much at all about being tired.

We had the afternoon to relax at the hut - Ben was pretty tired, so he didn't feel like doing much drawing or anything. He was complaining of a sore tummy at dinner time, probably just because he was tired. He was in bed by 6:30 and slept like he usually does - very solidly. Porridge in the morning was consumed with gusto, before we walked back down, getting down in 3hours flat.

Once we got back to the campground, it was time for an Easter egg hunt! The kids were rather excited about it, and had great fun rushing around trying to find eggs - including Naomi once she worked out what we were doing. She also tried to eat the Easter eggs, foil wrapping and all...

Overnight, the rain arrived, so Monday morning the kids stayed in the tent while we packed everything up - we managed to do it pretty easily without getting stuff wet (other than having to pack the tent up wet obviously!). And again, seen as it was raining, we just went straight home rather than stopping somewhere for lunch. The kids had loads of fun and we enjoyed being able to sit back and relax a little - we must do it again. But it's now getting a little close to winter, so probably getting a little cold for camping...

Rotorua Marathon 2011: Race Report

This was my 5th marathon... Auckland last year had felt pretty good, and I thought my preparation was pretty similar and I thought I had a shot at a PB at least. The weather forecast looked perfect - minimum of 4C, max of 17C, with easterly breezes.

By the 10am start time, the day had warmed up enough that it was pretty comfortable - in hindsight, that's not a good thing - it just means it's going to be too hot later! The first half of the race was pretty comfy - I was trying to keep the pace really comfortable, hanging around the 4hr pace group - they were behind me to start with, then eased ahead. The only speedbump in this section was a traffic cone around the 5km mark - I was looking behind to see where the pace group was and tripped over it. Oops. No damage done though.

By halfway, we'd climbed the first of the two big hills - Hamurana. And I was getting a little twinge in my calves and hammies. Not a good thing. I made sure I eased gently down the hill - there's nothing worse than flying down a hill, only to discover that you've just hammered your quads completely.

The rolling back section of the lake was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. By the time I got to Mourea Hill at around 26km, I was feeling rather tired. I managed to hold it together for another 8km, but by 34km I had nothing left - my legs were burning and I felt like I would have thrown up if I'd had anything left in my stomach to throw. It was also along here that there were 3 runners collapsed and in need of an ambulance - I haven't seen that before in a marathon. By this time, the sun was blazing down and the course was sheltered from any breeze - even though it might only have got to 19.8C, trust me, it felt HOT. The 4hr15 pace runners went past me somewhere in the last few km, and I had nothing left to try and keep up with them. I did manage to jog the last few hundred metres, but that was about it.

Surprisingly, despite really struggling in that second half, my legs recovered pretty quickly to being able to walk properly - unlike last time at Rotorua. And a few big drinks of water fixed up a bit of dehydration.

Looking back at my 5 marathons, this is my second-worst. Only my first was slightly slower:

Gold Coast 05: 4:27

Gold Coast 08: 4:19

Rotorua 09: 4:24

Auckland 10: 4:18

Rotorua 11: 4:26

Oh well, maybe next time for that PB!

PS: The full details are here. You can see the two big hills (the spikes around the 2hr and 2hr30 marks) and can see exactly where I started walking!