Tag Archives: body building

Queenstown7

Leave a reply

Various things have been prying me away from my running time recently; working throughout daylight hours 5 days a week; body building at the gym; and the all-important social life. My beloved blog is looking a bit lack-lustre at the minute. I need to pull my bloody finger out! Cue me getting injured.

Winter in Queenstown has brought yet another active pursuit to my table: snowboarding! It’s something I had never tried before Sunday, but round here if you ain’t boarding, you must be boring. I’m not always one to follow the hoards, but in this case I’m happy to. So far on my travels I’ve trekked, cycled, kayaked and surfed among others. Adding snowboarding to the list is the natural progression now I’m in the snowy mountains of the South. 

With between us less knowledge than a novice, a friend and I headed up the mountain with the kit I could scrape together through friends and local rental shops. We took to the baby slopes and I, well, took to my arse. It was great fun but a little frustrating to say the least. And given my propensity to injure myself, a little scary. After many bumps, twists and falls we called it a day as a blizzard whipped up and reduced the visibility to less than a teenager’s hot-box. 

  

The following day I woke feeling alright, albeit a bit sore all over. With another day of fitness ahead, I hit the gym early to make some muscle. Maybe not the best idea. Mid-dead lift I realised my lower back wasn’t feeling great. And after a few heavy squats it was feeling even worse. By afternoon my ambitious running plans were reduced to a feeble waddle around the house popping painkillers. I’m pretty sure it’s just a muscular injury and I hope to return to running away by the weekend. When I have 2 more days of snowboarding arranged. Lesson learned?!


Frankton2

3 Replies

It’s all change in my life right now (new hometown, new job, new season…) and the most recent evolution is my purchasing of a car. And it’s not just ‘a’ car, it’s my first ever car! It also came with a free kayak (!) among many other bits and bobs including a jar of jam and a trance CD. So it doesn’t have a warrant of fitness or registration but that’s beside the point, don’t try and tell me I didn’t get a good deal on this bad boy! Today was my first day off this week and this morning was spent pursuing that all important warrant of fitness to get my ride legal. It wasn’t as simple as dropping it off at a garage to get it ship shape, like I’d hoped, but it seems it will be an affordable, if a little timely, fix up. Here’s a pic of the beast (minus kayak).

 

After a while of driving between various garages (who knew there were all different kinds?!), I drove to the gym for a personal training session, ensuring no eye contact was made with passing police. I was little early so strapped up my sneaks and headed out on to the surrounding playing fields to get a cheeky 5k in. There’s not much to report as it was a pretty plain route compared to some of my recent runs. The Remarkables looked down on me under a grey sky, and a plane took off on the airport runway behind the fields. 

  

Nevertheless, my little jog had me warmed up and ready for some iron pumping; I got a good session in at the gym, working on my legs and chest. My body building is going well anyway, I feel like I’m getting back to the tone (or even more than) I had at home when I trained at a boxing gym. Jodie Marsh eat your heart out! 


Queenstown4

Leave a reply

So my posting has been a bit lacking recently, probably because I am now a fully fledged, employed, real human being. I’m settling in to my life in Queenstown and my new job, but no longer feel such a free-spirited nomad, inspired to run and write by each new destination. However it’s a nice change to feel grounded and have some sort of home and routine. 

The routine in question revolves around my employment on the world famous Queenstown luge. What, you don’t know what a luge is?! Ok so I was a bit hazy before I went and saw it myself…maybe New Zealand famous might be more accurate… But it’s a cool job all round: riding the luge; seeing people having fun every day; being in hundreds of go pro videos wearing an oversized raincoat; and working with fun people. It was these fun people who lead to my most recent run being, well, a bit of a struggle. 

Despite following the golden gospel of “beer then wine, you’ll feel fine (wine then beer, you’ll feel queer)”, I didn’t exactly feel fine on my last day off. Maybe I’ll always feel a little bit queer after a night with the lugies. But I would not be defeated by those jäger bombs. I donned my trainers and packed my gym bag. I was going for the double whammy; run to the gym and then pump iron!

It’s a nice flat route along the lakeside to my gym, which is around 7km. Theoretically easy peasy, but not that day. The great thing about running in beautiful places is that stopping to take photos is a great excuse to have a breather and is completely acceptable. I lived by this and punctuated my journey with photo shoots and stopping to gaze. My steady pace gave me time to notice the details I might usually miss; the many mushrooms popping up now it’s autumn; the tiny mouse jumping through the grass by the track. As it always does, the fresh air flushed my body of toxins and self pity and I hit the gym ready to PUUUSH. Despite taking an hour to run the 7k, it was a fruitful foray. I must go and investigate those fungi varieties more closely on my next day off…