The 7 in 7 Challenge 2010

What was I thinking?

The Greenstone Valley under low cloud

Well, I knew it was time to start training in earnest again – one look at the bathroom scales confirmed this – but was it wise to go out and run the 5th longest run of my life so early on? Answer = a definitive NO! But as I was in the Fiordland area anyway I just couldn’t resist the lure of the Greenstone-Caples circuit – not even with a rather dodgey weather forecast. It’s a great run, except for the 3-hour enforced walk up and over the McKellar Saddle which is gnarly enough to have trampers swearing, let alone runners. The lack of training over recent months showed itself in early stumbles that landed me in an icy stream, followed shortly after by an ankle-cracking twist on a hidden tree root. By the 5 hour mark, still short of the half way point, I was really wondering about the wisdom of all this – and that’s when it really started to rain hard! But as so often happens on these long runs my second wind came to me and I finished the gradual descent of the Greenstone Valley feeling quite chipper (well, relatively speaking at least). 60kms and 10 1/2 hours later I was back at the car and heading for a big feed in Glenorchy and what turned out to be a 12 hour sleep!

So training for the 2010 edition of the 7in7 Challenge is well and truly underway. This blog will once again become a regular event so I hope all who are subscribed by email continue to follow progress. And please feel free to forward this to anyone else who you think might be interested.

As well as this blog there will be a monthly newsletter, so if you’re not already subscribed to this you can do so in 10 seconds flat by clicking here (just in case that doesn’t work drop me an email entitled ‘newsletter’ to mal@7in7.org.nz

You might also like to check out our Facebook Group, which I hope will become a source of lively gossip and debate as the year progresses. Or start following malkiwi on Twitter.

Yeeha… the show is on the road again!

Related posts:

1. How to follow
2. Where am I?
3. My favourite time of year
4. What a week!
5. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3….

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 8:16 am and is filed under News, Training and tagged with facebook, Fiordland, Greenstone Valley, Greenstone-Caples, twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.