Bread making update...

After making our first loaf of bread in our new breadmaker the other day, we have made 2 more loaves. The first 2 were just basic white loaves and the 3rd loaf I tried doing a multigrain loaf. We haven't had any flops yet and the kids like eating it. I'm enjoying not having the pressure of needing to go to the supermarket multiple times in a week to buy more bread.

Comparing marathons

(Apologies to those that couldn't really care less about marathons. Go read something else!)

I dug out the times recorded at my previous best marathon - Gold Coast 2008. At that race, times were recorded at 5km intervals, so some sort of pacing information could be plotted, similar to what I did the other day, but without quite as fine a granularity. This is the result, compared to Auckland last month:

My summary of what it shows:

• My pace seemed steadier in the first half of GC - possibly because of having no hills. The first half of Akl is relatively hilly.
• I started slowing down from about 15km already... and it just got worse.
• Somewhere between 25 and 30km I was starting to hurt
• Shortly after 30km is where I started walking - and walked most of the rest of the way.
• A slow and easy first half at Akl ended up being a slightly faster time overall.

Advent planning

Now that birthday season is over, I have time to start organising stuff for our annual Advent/Christmas traditions. A lot of these traditions we only started last year and plan to continue this year. So what have I been up to:

- buying gifts and thinking of other special activities to use in our Advent calendar

- we went as a family to select our Christmas tree (but got to the Christmas tree farm to find out we are too early getting it organised this year - they don't open for another 2 weeks!)

- I've bought ingredients to make Christmas cake and rum balls (to both eat ourselves and give away as gifts to our friends and neighbours)

- Gathering some supplies and ideas for christmas decorations

What I need to do in the next couple of weeks:

- construct the advent calendar

- select the christmas tree (when the tree farm opens!)

- make the Christmas cakes and rum balls

- make and put up christmas decorations

- plan Christmas day menu

- borrow a selection of Christmas books from the library and collect up all our Christmas books to put in the Christmas book box so that they are easily on hand for the month.

Feeling hot, hot , hot...

It feels like summer! For the first time since we moved here, it seems that summer might have arrived early!

Fresh bread...

We got ourselves a breadmaker the other week... and finally got around to making our first bread last night. yum.

Our big boy...

is now a school boy. Here in NZ, you get to start school as soon as you're 5 (if you like - you don't have to be at school until you're 6). So, with Ben's birthday yesterday, he got to start school today. He was very excited about starting school - and we feel like he's ready... he's keen to learn and has started the "keep-asking-questions-continuously" phase.

Busy busy busy...

Life's been busy recently. Too busy to blog. Here's some highlights:

• Naomi's birthday party. Photos here.
• Ben's birthday party. Photos here.
• Ben's last day of kindy. Photos here
• Ben's first day of school tomorrow. (Edit: Photos now here!)

Dissecting a marathon

A few months ago, I got myself a Timex Ironman watch, which does all sorts of cool things. The main reason I got it is that it lets me store up to 75 "laps", which means I can record my km splits during a race, assuming I manage to see the km markers as I'm going past. What that means is that I can work out at what point I start to fade during a race, and work at keeping a more even pace. Anyway, last week's marathon was the first time I've got to use it in a race... I managed to record 23 "laps", some of which were obviously more than just a single km because I missed the markers. A plot of the km splits is pretty cool though (just splitting the times evenly where I missed the markers):

It's interesting to note:

• The first few km were a little slow, as would be expected, because of the crowds of people at the start.
• Between about 12 and 15km is the Harbour Bridge, which is probably the hilliest part of the course, so I'm guessing that's why that's a little slow
• 34km must have been about when I got really tired!
• I managed to hold it together relatively well - the small amounts of walking I did don't really show up that much, which means I must have still been moving at a sort-of reasonable speed.

I'm happy with it, anyway!

Bad time of year to be sick

There is so much to be done:

• naomi's birthday party this saturday
• ben's birthday party next saturday
• ben starting school
• advent calendar to organise
• christmas shopping to organise (haven't be as organised as previous years)
• tidying/organising the house - including hanging some new curtains to block the light in the bedroom b4 it is still light at 9.30pm

sick days

My 'Bad cold' is still bad, so Peter's taken some time off work so I can rest a bit to try and get over it. I am feeling a little better, but I'm still coughing and using a lot of tissues.