Robin and I drove to Christchurch this past thursday to celebrate my mothers 70th birthday. Being that Sunday is a work day for Robin we drove down thurs and came back LATE Saturday night. Its about 4hours down to my parents place.

We had a back to back night celebrations on Friday and Saturday. With Saturday being the day 4 Humphreys’ ran in my hometown community fun run. I grew up in this town, well for the 1st 12 years of my life before moving away with my parents. They have gone full circle now and moved back about 4 years ago. Strange to be back in the ol home town. Still mostly the same, about 1000 people. No stop light, farming community etc.

As mentioned on the Saturday there was a fun run that consisted of the options on a 5K run or walk, 10k run or walk and a 1/2 marathon. I convinced Robin, one of my sisters and mum along with me to all sign up. Mum and Louise for the 5K walk, robin did the 5K run and i was signed up to do the 1/2 but i changed to the 10K and recently i have raced so much i need a break and the body was starting to get a little tired. Having raced 5 out of 7 weekends. Including 2 half marathons and an adventure race. Time For A Break. Therefore i downsized to the 10K. I struggled with the choice but was glad to have made it. I could certainly knock out another 1/2 but b/c i the way i am wired up i always want to do well not only finish.

Anyways we had a great day running, the whole town comes out to run or watch. The finish line is at the end of the Main Street which is lined with people. My mother got a podium finish in her age group for the 5K walk. I am soooooo proud of her as its her ever race and I was there to celebrate with her…. GO Mum. Louise had a good time walking with her. She works for Red Cross International and is about to leave to Beirut, Lebanon to work in a hospital for escaping Syrian refugees. This a life she loves and has been all over the world doing this. So please prayers for her. Robin ran well recording one of her fastest times for a 5K. And i finished 2nd overall in the 10K race. Not a quick time but hey 2nd, ill take it.

This week the weather is really starting to warm up in fact its been HOT. I was out on the water for the past 2days with 22 high school students from all over the world . We had a long day on the water, day 1 but coming back today was mint weather conditions.

Robins birthday is this thursday, which yes is thankgiving. I have a killer present for her and can’t say yet unless she reads this. Will post some pics on thurs or friday of the proud birthday girl. We are cooking a big feast for thanksgiving and having a few friends over, some of whom are Americans.

Well made it back from the race on Saturday through the Molesworth Farm. What an amazing place and landscape. Very wild & raw and untouched. The weather was brilliant which is great consider it can snow in there even in the middle of summer.

I ran the 2nd leg of 4, which gave me 22km to literally slog through that amazing landscape. 22km which is a little more than a 1/2 marathon took me 1hr 53mins which considering I typically do a 1/2 marathon in 1hr 20-25mins shows what kind of environment we were in. It is still hard to describe as we were running on dirt roads, so not trails or nothing at all, the weather was good…mostly. Generally speaking a difficult place to run an even exist.

Part of my slow time was the heat, it was windy and a warm wind blowing but I had it as a tail wind and that meant I was getting really hot every time I tried to speed up. But made it through. My team mates did wonderfully well also. With Michelle competing the last leg and a wickedly steep down hill in even hotter conditions. It was fun to ride along in the SAG vehicle and support my team giving them water etc along the way and snapping photos like these. If you come to NZ you need to go through The Molesworth.

Tomorrow i am running in a 4 person team relay through NZ’s biggest ‘farm’ the 500,000 acre Molesworth Station. Each of us will run about 22Km. the only road through is very remote and un-developed.

What i am looking forward to the most is the scenery. Its supposed to be amazing down through there and when not running we will be in the team SAG vehicle and I will be taking LOTS of photos. I am carrying a bit of a foot injury most likely from racing 3 out of 4 weekends with 2 of those being 1/2 marathons. One more race next weekend, then i will rest for probably 2 weeks before starting up the “mountain” of training needed for GodZone 6 day Adventure Race here in NZ next march.

Photos soon.

Yup, i’m back and writing will be writing more. Feel like have come out of the winter both literally and figuratively down here in NZ. Yesterday reached 84F which is really hot for here, but the joy of living in an island nation way down the bottom of the south Pacific is that all you have to do is wait 12-24hrs and its chilly again. Well not supper chilly, but a lot cooler than yesterday.

We have survived the winter, and are definitely into spring. Have been racing some. For some reason lots of running. Will be doing my 3rd 1/2 marathon this weekend and another next weekend.

Robin and I climbed last weekend. Didn’t summit as the weather pulled up bad on us, and I am quite cautious when it comes to the mountains in NZ. See below for some great pix from that trip.

We both raced in the weekend. Robin as part of a team doing the kayaking section and her team mates completing the trail run and bike sections. I did the whole thing on my own. Had a good run but fell apart of the paddle for some reason. But plenty to do. We are spending lots of time together doing fun adventures and always looking for a reason to go away.

Last weekend while climbing we put Cora in a kennel for the w/e, unfortunately when we went to pick her up they said she cannot come back as she howled most of the 2 night we were away. The owners said that Weimarainer’s are sooooo loyal that they can do that. And of course when she started howling the whole kennel starts…. my bad. So we tell her, that she got expelled from the doggie resort.

This weekend we are off to travel through the largest sheep & cattle station/ranch in NZ-Molesworth Station. Its about 500,000 acres in size and some of the most wild, remote and temperature extreme part of the country. The ‘gate’ is only about 90mins from here and I have the pleasure of running through there this Saturday as part of a 4 person relay race. Its not the entire farm but the 1 public road through there that is shut for 6 months of the year as the weather is so bad. We each get to run about 22km on rough gravel roads. The goal is of course the finish line which happens to be in a alpine thermal report town call Hanmer Springs. Where we will of course relax in the springs and relax our legs. I am running leg 2 or 3, yet to be decided. I am really looking forward to it. Molesworth Station has a special place in NZers hearts as a very unique and wild place, and owned by every NZer as the govt now owns it and contracts out its management.

The photos are from climbing trip 2 weekends ago. Also not far from Molesworth Station. Mt Tapuae-o-uenuku the 1st mountain Sir Ed Hillary climbed.

We have had multiple 5.5 plus quakes in the past 30mins even a 6.9 yikes.

While we still continue to have small aftershocks it appears to be returning to normal. A report was released today announcing (that said we just had a 4.0 as i type this post) anyways as i was saying a report released today announced that the Marlborough Region (or our region) has moved 5cm to the east, which means we are now a little bit closer to the USA.

Therefore if you were thinking of visiting us, now its a wee bit closer. You can thanks the Australian and Pacific Tectonic Plates later.

Perhaps you have seen some reports about the quakes down here, and from what we have seen its mostly been centered around Wellington, our capital. Well time for the little guy to fight back. The epicenter of the quakes was a lot closer to us here in Blenheim than Wellington. However Wellington has to go and steal all the limelight.

Go and get your own earthquakes Wellington! These quakes belong to us. Being our capital i’m sure enough bad news comes out of there anyway.

That said we have survived another day and the “experts” say we are less and less likely to have a big one now as we move away in time from the big 3-4 we have had in the past 72hrs. That said… I DONT BELIEVE THEM… and really doubt if they know what they are talking about.

Robin & I were awoken in the middle of the night by a few big ones, you lie there and wait, trying to figure out if we needed to jump out of bed and dive under the door frame. You play this game almost of waiting to see if its going to get bigger, almost like chicken… i hope we win every time. And one cannot do diving for cover every time there is a shake because they are quite literally every few minutes, many we don’t feel (however robin seems to sense more than i do) and they are all from the same fault line. There have been 100’s of them since Friday morning.

For example this afternoon i was at a meeting on the 4th floor of the central Police station here in Blenheim and there was a significant aftershock. And before you ask, it was a legit meeting, i wasn’t being arrested or held in custody. That would be the basement of the Po Po station. It did feel erie to be up there in a building that was swaying for about 45 seconds.

Several buildings around town have been closed for inspection, and i feel bad for many people who moved here from Christchurch in the past 2 years to escape their dramas of earthquakes.

Life almost carries on, we have a series of small shakes then a big jolt an you can tell how bad it was as the sirens for the fire department might start a few moments later. Out in God’s wonderful creation photos are filtering in landslides, slips and big rock falls. I saw some pic of some massive sea cliffs about 30mins from here falling into the ocean on Sunday evening as the sun was setting.
Here is a link to it.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/8949513/Changing-landscape

We are off to the mountains this weekend to do some alpine climbing, interested to see what we can find up there as a result of this past few days. Can assure you we will have some sweet pics.

Thanks for prayers and thoughts, we are doing fine.

Its time to go to bed here. Not sure what that will look like tonight. In the past 1hour there has been about 27 quakes on the fault that we are nearest. Many are small and we don’t feel, others we certainly do.

If you want to check out the website that every NZer knows well from the past few years its http://www.geonet.org.nz this is where all information, quake, volcanic etc is posted. It updates itself VERY quickly. We are close to Seddon, so the site lists the location as “… east of Seddon” or similar. This is the fault line we are closest to. Seddon is a small town about 30mins east of Blenheim. The so called experts are calling this ‘the Seddon Sequence’. Definitely a sequence.