Well my Mac died.  There I was importing some photos from my camera when it just froze and refused to wake up.  According to the big, wise, internet, the point in it’s startup routine where it fails means that it’s the motherboard that has gone.  It’s an old machine and repair is probably cost prohibitive.

And there’s so much to share.  Once again we had a little hiatus after a busy blogging November as things got somewhat hectic running up to Christmas.  Now I feel like my hands are tied.  Blogging for me is all about photos and videos to go with the words.  Obviously I could technically edit my photos on a windows machine – this one we bought for Josie’s work is no slouch.  But I want to keep her machine as clean for work as possible.  And I’m used to using the Mac and Aperture and iMovie now.  It all just works…  except when it fails completely

So it’s appalling timing so soon after Christmas, but I’ll have to try and replace it in a cost effective way.  Hopefully soon – the backlog of video and photos is growing!

We’ve decided that Santa Parade is one of our most favourite things to do here.  For the uninitiated, Farmers is a big department store here and every year they sponsor a huge parade of floats and marching and giant inflatables through the middle of Auckland.  Families line the route, the sensible ones (including us this year, haha ) have their own camping chairs.

Our first camping trip of the year was to the Coromandel and a great camp ground at Cooks Beach.  The journey up on Friday afternoon was appalling.  There are roadworks to replace an old single land bridge and as well as there being a queue for the single lane bridge there were hand controlled road works as well.

One of our favourite attractions is a place called Waterworks, we spent a great afternoon there looking around and playing on all the stuff.

My legs have been hurting all week.  The cramp I suffered on Sunday really left it’s mark on my poor calves and up until yesterday they were like mahogany.  I got a fantastic massage from Absolute Body Focus yesterday and it’s made a world of difference.  I really do think that having a good sports masseur is worth so much more than a new gadget of gizmo to help your training.

See if you can spot the discomfort in my face in this very brief video of the end of the race on Sunday.

In the 7 days before the event I’d done two open water swims.  A training run on the previous Sunday morning, covering about 1.6 to 1.7km and an event on Tuesday night covering 1.5km.  Sunday had gone well until I suffered from bad cramp and had to make for shore earlier than planned.  Tuesday I was really pleased with – a time of 26 minutes for the 1.5km.  They did warn us on the night that the course was a little short, but even so I was pleased with that.

So I get a text message wishing me luck (if I’d entered) and letting me know there were still places (if I hadn’t) and mentioning that it was a really good weather forecast.  So I caved in and decided I’d feel really let out if I didn’t at least try.

Yesterday it looked like the forecast was just plain wrong.  By the middle of the afternoon it was overcast and starting to rain.  Not what I’d ordered…  I picked up my race pack from a very congested Copthorne Hotel in Auckland.  It was looking like I was in for a long wait, but was very lucky because the line for my bib number (silly name really because you don’t wear a bib…) was almost empty.  So I skipped past the queues and after grabbing my pack, picked up a new pair of goggles at the SwimT3 stand. I love these guys.  I bought my wetsuit from them two years ago and they took such care helping fit it and get me setup for my ocean swimming in New Zealand.  And do they take advantage of being at the race pack pick-up by edging prices up a little?  No, in fact they applied a 10% discount across everything instead…

So what about the race?  Well the weather cleared and the morning was glorious.  I was sat on the deck at 7am eating porridge listening to the birds in the trees that were feeling not a breath of wind on their leaves.  I could picture the harbour – in it’s gentle, mill-pond like state, beckoning 1300 eager swimmers into it. 

After being dropped off it was clear that it was going to be a nice day, although the water conditions turned out to be not quite so mill-pond like.  As with last year the start is done in waves based on estimated time.  I was in the fourth wave this year, hoping to improve on last year’s time.  Only a minute apart I was soon following the rest of the pack around Bayswater Marina and out into the harbour.  It was all feeling good.  I was very pleased with my stroke and felt like I was making good progress.

I had real trouble sighting the first buoy so I just headed towards the pack ahead and kept going in roughly the right direction.  I got course corrected by a lifeguard after 15 minutes or so because I was drifting to far towards the bridge and away from the set course.  I picked a new landmark and pressed on.

It’s amazing how for the majority of the race there is no-one around you.  In a pack of 1300 people you’d think it would be all thrashing arms and legs.  Far from it, for the majority of the crossing I was on my own (maybe something to do with my erratic navigation).  I felt like I was doing really well as I approached the last buoy in the the open water, I’d even started to pick up some other swimmers.

It was somewhere around this point – about 30 minutes from finishing maybe – that someone swam over me.  Not a big deal, they just clipped my legs and it happens.  However, I tensed up and my reaction caused both my thighs to cramp up horribly.   I took a few minutes to slow down and do some different kicking to swim through it and cleared the cramp.  But now I had a problem.  The other muscles in my legs decided to join the party.  So if I tried to put on any power through my arms, I’d have to kick to stabilise with my legs and one after another my calf would go, then I’d clear it, then an ankle, then the other calf.  For the remainder of the swim I was concentrating purely on kicking out whatever cramp had just hit.  I’m pretty sure it crucified my pace for that last section and as I approached the steps I was actually a little worried that I might not be able to stand as I left the water.

The last section of the race is through the newly refurbished part of the the viaduct harbour and it makes a great end to the race.  You swim under the new opening bridge and round to some new steps that lead down from the refurbished Wynyard quarter area and make a great place to finish and to spectate.

I didn’t even see the clock because my legs were so sore as I managed to stand and hobble over the finish line.

In the end I did finish ahead of last years time.  Only by a minute or so by the clock time, but last year’s course was shorter.  So if you adjust the time to make it a fair comparison my time this year of 1:27:56 was about four minutes faster than last year’s adjusted 1:31:42.

So I’m delighted I went for it.  I’m delighted I beat last year’s time.  I would have preferred to hit somewhere around the 1:10:00 mark and who knows, without the navigation and cramp blunders I would have been nearer to it.  But they are all part of the event.  So for another year that’s the harbour crossed.  Whenever I look out at the stretch of water between Bayswater marina and the viaduct harbour I feel very very satisfied.

http://www.oceanswim.co.nz/

In 3 days time approximately 2000 people will swim across the Auckland Harbour in a once a year opportunity that heralds the start of the ocean swim season.  I completed this 2.8km race last year in 1h30 minutes coming in fairly close to last… but I came in.  I’d trained very hard prior to the race and although relatively new, had worked on my technique as well.

This year I won’t be one of those making the crossing.  I had a long spell out of the pool due to illness and recurring back pain.  I’ve now learned that carrying on swimming through the back pain is actually the best thing for it.  Counter-intuitive, but it really helps me cope.  The time away from swimming has meant that I’m a few weeks short of being it for the race.

I did a 1.7km swim at the weekend which I was very tired by the end of and worse, my calf cramped and seems to have actually pulled the muscle.  I then did a 1.5km event on Tuesday night, finishing in a not too shabby 26 minutes.  If I had the stamina to do two of those in a row, I’d pick up a very reasonable Harbour Crossing time of under and hour.  But I’m simply not ready.  Possibly another couple of weeks and I’d have been good, but not this week.

I’ll keep doing theState Beach Series on Tuesday nights at Takapuna and I may enter the next ocean swimevent between Paihia and Russell in the Bay of Islands. That’s a little longer at 3.3km, but I’m confident I can be ready if I keep putting the effort in.

I’ve never liked Halloween.  Not quite sure why… it’s just never been a thing I’ve enjoyed.

I do have vivid memories of children visiting the house on Halloween and giving the house a coating of eggs or flour if they didn’t get the sweets they demanded.  I know eggs are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not a nice memory.

I don’t mind the costumes (although vampires and vampire lore and vampire TV shows make me want to gouge my own eyes out, but that’s a whole different rant!).  I quite like the very clever pumpkin carving like this fantastic carved self-portrait

from my friend Matt (the history books say it was traditional to carve a turnip in Scotland)

The thing I just can’t seem to let go of is the feeling that the modern day basis for Halloween is about Trick or Treating which is about getting stuff for free.  And that for me just feels like begging.  Historically that’s what it was, with the poor going from door to door trying to get scraps to stay alive.

The other thing I just can’t get away from is that to threaten people with some kind of undesired consequence if they don’t provide you with what you demand is basically extortion.  How is that a good thing to teach your children?  That’s not the way I want the world to work…

Auckland is changing.  There are so many projects on the go at the moment.  Many were in the lead up to the rugby world cup, but that’s all done now, so it will be interesting to see if the rate of change slows significantly.

One project that has nothing to do with the world cup is the change to Aucklands motorway in the Victoria Park area.

The Victoria Tunnel Project re-routes around 450m of motorway through a new northbound tunnel in order to allow traffic in the opposite direction to use all four lanes of the fly-over (currently two north and two south).

Admittedly it’s not quite as impressive a construction project as other tunnels, for instance the The Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland at 57km long, but when the opportunity arose to walk through it on the open day we had to take it!  We’ve been regularly driving past the works for more than a year and there was mostly very little to see.  Occasionally you would get a glimpse of the uncovered trench of the cut and cover tunnel, but mostly it was largely hidden from view.

I really hope they have the traffic modelling correct because if they haven’t it’s going to be a very big expensive way of moving a bottleneck 450m further south!

I’ve included a few photos of the family and some civil engineering ‘porn’ for other tunnel fans!