Summer Sea Swim Series!

Getting up at 5:30am 2 or 3 times a week for the past three months has been tough. Firstly the cold, dark winter starts were hard to get used to (no central heating so cold getting out of bed!). Secondly, the coach is quite blunt and quickly ripped our 30+ year old strokes apart! We train by completing a succession of drills - not just completing lengths but swimming arms by your side, face down, building in small parts of the arm motion each drill... After 3 months we are improved but some way off our goal - there are some lovely swimmers who train with us and it will be great to get to their level of smooth, gliding strokes which look so effortless!

We began and still are in the slowest lane. Constantly reminded not to rush but to perfect the technique... that has been hard for both of us, used to ploughing up and down the lanes to improve strenth, but not technique! One poor guy in our lane has been going for over 6 years and still hasn't grasped much of the technique, but everybody who goes, gets a lot out of the routine and the comaraderie of the whole session.

Last night was our first Nelson Summer Sea Swim Series race. Bernie and I are both on the comittee, as it is organised by the Nelson Triathlon club, and it has been fun and interesting being involved in the planning and organisation. B is still fighting a cold and a harsh cough so she came and marshalled the race. I joined the long swim - 900m - the distance grows each week, eventually reaching a Saturday endurance swim of 3.8km - Ironman swim distance!

The race is in Nelson harbour. To a POM (prisoner of mother England!) like me, harbours are dirty, polluted death traps. Despite being the busiest port in New Zealand, the water is clear and calm and inviting (see pics), why can we have that in the UK - a population 15 times greater than NZ's is probably to blame!

The course was easy to navigate and the 80 or so competitors got around without too many pile-ups which was nice! There were 110 people the week before, a shorter course and many melee's so it was quite fortunate that I was in the Abel Tasman watching seals instead!

Health and safety is not as frustrating as it is in the UK, but it is catching up. Peter Gibbs, who runs the triathlon club does a great job in running the show and with volunteers like Bernie, everybody had a great time. Stories of sharks and getting lost in the small harbour bounced around before people tootled off home. A very pleasant way to spend a Thursday evening (as my father would say!).

I finished 41st out of 80 - room for improvement! There are a further 12 Thursday swims to climb the ladder... back to the pool first thing tomorrow morning!

Fitness Freaks!!

Both Bernie and I began triathlon training in the UK early this year, culminating in two 'sprint' triathlons - 750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run.

When chosing a suitable part of NZ to spend the next few years, one big consideration was a triathlon club and suitable training facilities. Needless to say, Nelson has not let us down in the slightest. As mentioned earlier, upon attending the AGM soon after we arrived, we were elected onto the comittee which has opened doors and enabled us to make friends outside school. The pools are great, our swimming coach is hard on us, the choice of runs and bike rides are endless and vary from flat to mountainous with everything in beween.

There is no elitism or cliques here, just friendly people who want to train and compete to their chosen standard. In the UK it all felt elitist and unwelcoming - perhaps because we were plebs, I'm not sure!

We have completed 4 duathlons so far - the swim being ommited due to the cold. Our first triathlon is a couple of weeks away. Bernie finished second and third in the womens' catergories (see previous post) which is excellent, but something B plays down - being typically Bernie!

I am less successful and alas, have not done better than second in my sex and age catergory - it is great to have a competition within a competition to give everybody a chance to compete for honours!

We recently started running training, well I had the assessment (B was ill) but the first training session was rained off. By the time of our next session, our French coach (who competed professionally in triathlons for a decade) threw a hissy-fit (via e-mail) and cancelled the sessions, stating he has been let down and is not prepared to work for $50 an hour!! Oh well, will have to organise my own interval training programme - how hard can it be?!

More to follow soon...

White to Black

Football has obviously been a massive part of both B and my life over the past few years. Despite us now being on Skype (get on it people!) nothing will replace being with freinds, family... and West Ham!!

Optimistically, B surprised me with tickets to the Nelson rugby team The Mako's (I know!) last game of the season (a couple of months ago now). Alas, the crowd, excitement, drama and type of game being played was all a bit too... oval! With an impending fixture which see's England at home to the mighty All Blacks, I feel torn. Mum and Dad sent me and All Blacks top, I coincidentally recieved one from them for Xmas some 15 years ago, and I now live here, watching the match will be tough... GO YOU ALL BLACKS!!

DISCLAIMER: I AM ONLY SUPPORTING THE ALL BLACKS AS I AM IN DIRE NEED OF THE FEELING OF VICTORY AFTER FOLLOWING WEST HAM OVER LAND AND SEA. IF ENGLAND ARE ABLE TO PULL OFF A VICTORY AGAINT THE WORLDS FINEST (BERNIE WONT AGREE BUT HEY!) I WILL EAT MY OWN FACE...

Fun and Phobias!

Having another school trip to the Abel Tasman National Park was too good to be true was it not?!

The very day my students and I kayaked our way through the sun-bathed sea, a scientist (who came and gave my Biology class a shark dissection last month!) was alerted to a Mako shark (annoyingly pronounced Marko here!) lolloping into an estuary not far from our kayaking destination. The half-ton shark soon died - cause unknown, and was hauled up onto the harbour to be gawped at by locals and passers-by. Scientists predict that it is 35 and pregnant - not sure if they met something as attractive in a back-water nightclub recently but that is soe intuition!

As a scientist myself, I'm proud of my lack of phobias. Spiders are picked up (even eaten at festivals... long story!), snakes stroked at the circus and ladders climbed in a suitably manly fashion (if that's possible!) But, like many, I am still haunted by Jaws, or the thought of ending up like several of the (poor) actors on the Californian coast... Each time I go swimming, kayakng, fishing or sailing in the sea (yes it is a hard life!) I think constantly of fins, teeth and (my) blood-shed... Logic (and several hardened Kiwi adventurers) tells me that large sharks are now rare (thanks to man) and that an encounter with one would be brief, uneventful, and fortunate. Hard to agree with eh?!

Anyways, one fewer of the feckers are in our seas. The beast is holed up in an industrial freezer until an important enough scientist is dug up and put in charge of telling the waiting masses if the thing was about to release killing machines from its loins, its age and cause of death (possibly its own offsring... I know!)

Upon returning to Nelson and hearing this wonderful news, I had a few days of normality before heading out to the Abel Tasman again. Fortune was with me and I was asked to tke a group into the park on foot. I did venture out on the water and guess what - saw a sea creature being bludgoned to death by a sea beast... these took the forms of a happy seal and an increasingly legless octopus!

Another fab few days was spent sliding down waterfalls, watching glow-worm caves and huge insects at night, incredible star-scapes and stunning coastline and most importantly, no sharks!

On the flip side, I am currently studying prudently for my PADI scuba qualification which my good chum Crispin will assess me for over Xmas and the New Year. We will be up in Whangarei... shark territory!

Instead of Chavs, I get to see.... (read post below first)

In all, we saw blue penguins, NZ fur seals, Dusky dolphins, stingray (all pictured) as well as lot of fish, birds, golden sand, clear water and blue sky!

Now Abel to do this!

No, my spelling hasn't deteriorated... I've just returned from 3 days in the Abel Tasman National Park on a school camp. School trips in the UK meant a 5 hour coach journey, a hail of sweets inside the bus, icy hail outside, nights chasing kids around tents, and 5 days of muddy adventuring.

Instead, I took 23 impecably behaved Nelsonians just an hour from school into a dolphin and seal haven. We camped, swam, BBQ'd and played games on the golden beaches and visited seal colonies, islands and remote beaches by day!

The weather was hot and dry throughout, at no point were any of us bored yet, when I sarcastically asked one lad if he would rather be at school, he said "I wouldn't mind, I quite like school!" I must apeal to his teachers to give him a harder time!!

There was a pod of Orca (killer whales (which are actually dolphins not whales!)) in the area but we were not fortunate enough to see them. One of the guides taught me a fair amount about these awesome creatures, although he emphasised how little we understand them still. They are depicted by native American Indians as wolves of the sea due to their sophisticated social lives and their whilyness. There are two types, most are residents to an area who hunt fish not mammals. The other types are rogue travellers who attack seals and whales, clearing large expanses of sea as wildlife flee these aggressive hunters - detectable by a different clicking signature... apparently the only incidence of killer whales killing man is at Seaworld!

Anyway, I returned to Nelson tanned and ready for the weekend. Sadly, I have to teach for two days next week before heading back out to the Abel Tasman with a different group of students... what a bugger!

Spring then Snow?!

After a week of mostly sunny weather and warming temperatures, with Spring in full gear (I've been wearing T-shirts and shorts to school!), we were treated (?!) to some snow yesterday!

The houses here are paper-thin and central heating is a swear word. We arrived home late from a friends house to our chilly new abode... alas, we did not rise at 5:30 for our Thursday morning swim, but hunted under the duvet for what heat we could find...

The picture is from a bike race around the south island, where competitors have gone from sub-tropical to antarctic conditions in a day. Weather maps show huge, icy gusts spewing up from the south pole, a stark reminder of our remote location.

I'm very fortunate as my Y10 form class and I are camping next week. A load of other students are camping this week and have paid for sea kayaking tours - I pray the weather is better soon! I'm even luckier in fact, having secured another trip the week after my first - both kayaking around the Abel Tasman - fingers crossed for more warm weather and whales!