The Bach heads south

Considering The Bach is an ex-rental, we are certain it has ventured onto the "Mainland", aka the South Island, before. However, this was its first trip with us. Well, with Annalie anyway. She had to leave Ian and Maddy at home due to work reasons.

Annalie was heading to Blenheim in Marlborough to participate in her third half marathon in as many months. This one, however, was called the Vineyard Half, and if you're aware of what Marlborough is famous for, you'll understand why!

Annalie travelled over on the ferry on the Friday morning to get settled ahead of the saturday morning race. She managed to wander from her campsite to the start line as a loosener on the Friday afternoon, but mostly to check she didn't need to take The Bach with her and avoid the traffig/parking queues that were bound to happen. A pretty splendid afternoon in general.

 

 

Here's all the "medals" waiting for everybody who completes the HM

 

Some crazy Kiwi-ness - but it was worth it

On July 30th, we're going to train with the All Blacks. No, that's no lie. It's the truth. Annalie and some friends won a competition to train with the ABs conditioning coach and three of the team - nice!

To win this, Annalie and her friends had to put together a video stating why they wanted to win. We did a parody of the Air New Zealand safety video featuring Richard Simmons! We hope that the competition sponsors, Powerade, had a good giggle when they got it!

The competition was supposed to see the top five finalists go to a public vote, but for some reason, the other four finalists were ineligible so we won outright! And Annalie was lucky enough to be picked to bring a friend, so Ian gets to go too.



Annalie also thinks it shows off her weight loss a bit too :)

Some more photos of our run

Last time we showed you our results, but we wanted to show you that, in actual fact, we do run. So here's the proof of our attempts at crossing the finishing line...

Going round the forest this time

It would appear that the Round the Bays run wasn't a one-off for either of us.

This past weekend we headed up the coast to Waitarere to participate in the Great Forest run. Annalie managed to win a free entry into the half marathon via Twitter, so we headed off in The Bach to revisit the campsite we'd stayed at for our first night of campervan ownership.

With a range of distances to choose from, Ian decided to plump for a 5km sprint. Given that he's recovering from a hamstring injury, he didn't want to push it.

Annalie set off first at 9am. This time there was nobody to keep her company or stop her running too fast. The game plan was set to beat 2 hours 10 minutes, hoping to shave around 5 mins off her RTB time.

Her lack of running conscience buddy showed though, as she completed the course in under 2 hours! A goal she wasn't aiming for until the Wellington half marathon in June. Oh well. She'll just have to set another goal for then.

She finished just in time to see Ian off for the start of his race at 11.30. Waving him off with good luck in his ears, she thought she had about 25 minutes' respite before he crossed the line. 21 minutes later, a familiar figure crested the final hill and Ian sprinted for the finish line.

Even more impressive than a 21-minute finish time was the fact that he was placed 17th overall! Not bad when you consider he was up against club runners too. His biggest gripe was that 8 girls beat him!

Yes there are more runs in the pipeline, so this blog may now take on an additional agenda of updating you on our progress too! But having The Bach means we have so much flexibility, allowing us to combine our tiki tours around NZ with our newly emerged hobby!

A good summer isn't necessarily a good thing

We've had a corker of a summer. There's no two ways about it. For once, Welly has basked in day after day of sunshiney glory.

But forget about hosepipe bans, one of the suggestions here has been to shower with friends! The capital is down to about 20 days' supply, unless some rain arrives soon. The whole North Island has officially been declared in drought.

But it's hard to look at this negatively, when we're enjoying the best weather we've had since arriving in NZ. It's hard to see the downside when it looks like this...

In wine country. Again

This weekend we're in Martinborough again, this time courtesy of Annalie winning her Biggest Loser competition at the gym. The prize was a weekend for two at Brackenridge. We stayed here last year in the winter. But as we're having an amazing summer, the stay has a different feel to it.

Maddy gets to come with us too as it's pet friendly. Her favourite pastime at the moment is counting sheep. Literally!

Taming Tongariro again

This weekend we took our friends Toby and Jo up to National Park to walk the Tongariro Crossing again.

They weren't confident enough to do it alone so we offered to show them the way.

Sadly, sure to the volcano's eruption back in November, half the walk is still shut, so the walk is currently an out and back. But you still get the benefit of some of the best sights.

The walk is open to Red Crater, from which you can just about see the Emerald Lakes, probably the most photographed part.

The day started off really, really hot. But thankfully some cloud arrived and cooled us down a little. The trip felt a lot easier than last time, but our recent training no doubt helped. So much so that we've been to the gym today!

We don't think Toby and Jo would feel that energetic though ;-)