All good things come to an end…

The Rivers Cafe - a 'must do' in Murchison

Well, it was a week of glorious weather, glorious scenery and glorious running. So guess you could sum it all up by saying it was a glorious week! I spent the night after Heaphy parked up on the side of the road somewhere near Motueka. I got the fright of my life early next morning when a lone cyclist knocked on the van door – there I was in just my undies and who was the unexpected visitor? None other than Nathan Fa’ave, former World Champion Adventure Racer! This could only happen in NZ… but I think the sight of my boxer shorts frightened even this hardened outdoors man and he was soon on his way!

What a great van, what a great view. Thanks RoadCraft.

From there I had the most beautiful drive on open, empty roads to Murchison and an obligatory stop at another of the world’s best kept secrets - the Rivers Cafe. What a feed – bacon & eggs is rarely this good! From there it was on over the Lewis Pass in perfect picture postcard conditions (for videos of this see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePde8rrPno and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM0fgjtOX_E). I stopped off for a quick run in the forests of Hanmer Springs and although the legs were tired from their Heaphy extravaganza there was a surprising amount of spring in my step – that’s the ‘no pack to carry’ difference and it made me realise that I really had done hard yards running 110k with an overnight pack – no doubt come December the Heaphy will be a breeze (?!?!????!?!??)

Warming down in the Hanmer Forest

Then it was onwards to Christchurch where I parked up outside Al’s house (Al being a 7in7 support runner) and managed to avoid frighteneing any of the neighbours by keeping the curtains drawn until I had my jeans well and truly on! From the back of the van this morning I spoke via Skype with the New York office of National Geographic Adventure Magazine, who are publishing an online story about 7in7 in the next couple of weeks – great international exposure and hopefully all those rich Americans will then open their wallets and pour trillions into the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation!

So there you go…. it was quite a week, now back to being dad for another week – bring it on!

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm and is filed under 2009 Blogs, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.