A Damn Good Pie

So after a lovely little jaunt up the port hills with my father yesterday I decided it would be a good idea to take a day out from business and heading out to try to do various things and get up early and decided to go for a 'me' day. A 'me' day, though, for me entails a bit of a cheeky run. 

So I had a good sleep in for a change then took, like, forever to get ready. Any one watching would have wondered if I even wanted to do this. I must admit with the epic sunburn I'm displaying after neither my father not myself thought to bring sunscreen I am questioning it myself. 

But I'm out the door nonetheless and aiming for the hills. The real hills this time. Not sure if I'll get there but the Southern Alps are a pretty impressive beast. I had originally hoped to boss out a section of the Te Araroa track but time constraints are meaning that isn't going to be possible so I'm settling for a day out now instead. As I head up the road boiling in the sun I'm kind of okay with that. 

About a kilometre up the road I realise I've forgotten my head torch. I'm not expecting to be out after dark but I am hoping I can manage something epic enough to warrant a head torch so begrudgingly head back to my brothers house. Luckily he's built a farm out of the city so it's at least good countryside to be doubling back on. 

Standard running face.

Round two and I'm shortly out the door again. The roads around here on the Canterbury plains are just ridiculously long and straight. As in you can go fifty kilometres or so without a turn in the road. As it's a main road he lives on (albeit in rural New Zealand with very little traffic) I've decided to aim for a track if I can find one soon enough. Luckily I'd planned out the full route up around Arthur's Pass so have a rough idea of where to go and don't have to navigate on the fly too much. 

So I go about ten kilometres before I finally get to the road I want to go down which will cross the Eyre river. I'd noticed it was running pretty parallel to the road on the map but wasn't fully sure if it was actually going to be runnable. Or accessible for that matter. But soon enough I come to a bridge over it and regret not seeking it out earlier. It's a rocky riverbed that has completely dried up in the hot summer air so looks much nicer than the tarmac I've been on. I double check the map and head down to it. 

As soon as I hit the stones I realise the pace is about to drop dramatically. I remember running across Chesil beach back in Ol' Blighty and start getting horrific flashbacks. Then I remember it doesn't really get this hot there and my world is restored. Odd logic I know...

The world is crumbling...

Yeah, so on that note...it's bloody hot here. I've put a buff and a hat on my noggin to try not to make the sunburn worse. The downside is my head is baking like the potato it looks like. It's nice being able to move the brim of the cap around so that I can block the sun out of my eyes though. Small victories I guess?!?

Whilst my pace isn't improving on the rocks down here, my mood is. I love being in nature and I love warm weather even if it does hurt so I'm just loving all of this. The terrain is pretty barren but that's not surprising being on the plains. 

After a few kilometres I reach the next bridge on the map and get quite confused. Mainly because there isn't a bridge. And there is nary a bridge in the distance either. Then I click. It's not a bridge. It's a ford. I see dirt roads off either river bank and a flattened section of the dried riverbed. 

So I head off up the other side of the bank and back onto another long road although this time it's not that far until I reach Oxford. It's a pretty small town. I find a couple of petrol stations, a workingmans club and not a lot else. There is a tap out side someone's paddock and I wonder if it's safe (and allowed) to fill up my water bottles, because, did I mention it's hot? It looks a bit scuzzy so I opt for no. 

The foothills of the Southern Alps

In the distance this whole time I've seen the Alps but now I'm getting much closer and am pretty much in the foothills. A few more kilometres up the road and I reach a farm that on the map has a path going up the mountain behind it. It looks pretty private to me, plus the maps here don't seem to differentiate public and private paths but I decide to give it a go and tell myself to turn back if it looks private. The first field has three cows in it who look at me inquisitively but don't seem to be moving nearer. I eye up escape routes anyway and give them a wide berth. Over the cattle grid at the other end of the field and I'm into what looks like the main area of the farm with a house to my right and a barn to my left. There's also a dog roaming about who barks at me but doesn't seem aggressive. Again I give him a wide berth and head for the path out the back. 

Through another field and over a tiny stream. I dip my shoes in up to my ankles and it feels amazing. I normally wear two pairs of socks to avoid blisters so hot weather can mean things are a bit uncomfortable therefore a stream like this is a god send. I take a minute to stand in it and take in my surroundings before moving on. 

I get a bit further around the farm track and suddenly come to a fork in the road. The fields in either direction are fenced but not locked. Inside each field is a large quantity of cows. I don't like the look of this with my previous experience with cows. Not least of all yesterday's sprint to agoid a trampling so I'm understandably nervous. 

I check the map to see which side I'm supposed to go and, whilst the path forks off both ways, the one to the right of the gully up the middle of these hills seems the best one for where I want to go. It's also the one with the most cows. It's a hoppy foot moment as I try to figure out and decide what to do but as I'm not really sure if I'm trespassing and don't want to risk being stuck or chased I decide to turn back. It's around twenty two kilometres I've done today already. It's an okay time to turn back and still get a decent run in. 

I always love the turnaround point of an out and back run as it's the point where you know you're going to do what you set out to do. On the way out there is always the niggling feeling that you don't feel right or there is a tightness in your calf meaning you should probably just go home. The turn around point is where that goes away as that's the point where you've not much option other than carrying on if you want to get home for tea. I suppose there can be public transport options but half the time they're more complicated and take longer anyway. And they definitely don't exist here.

Anyway. So I head back down the hill and out of the farm. I don't see anyone around so still don't know if I'm trespassing. Oh well, I'm on the road now so definitely am not now even if I was then.

The heat is blazing pretty hard now so I adjust my buff and hat combo to make sure it's still working. It is. I plod back down to Oxford and stop in at one of the petrol stations to buy a bottle of water. Out the door then I use it to fill the bottles I borrowed off Dad yesterday and take a massive well needed gulp which is pretty nice and cold. 

As I'm just having a bandy about today I decide to take a detour through the town, which means a right turn at the end of the road rather than left and is completely the wrong way but I figure I'll aim for the next bridge along the Eyre and potter back from there. 

Along the way I find a dairy. There is a sign outside. The sign professes to point at pies inside the shop. By golly do I love a good Kiwi pie. Can I resist this? Can I avoid the temptation and continue? I'll be completely honest here and say that neither of those thoughts crossed my mind. There is never a good reason to not have an NZ pie. I step into the shop and get a couple of funny looks but I'm not bothered. I get myself a nice bacon and egg dream and start walking down the road munching away with a big grin on my chops. I see people drive past looking jealous of me and my pie. Okay that isn't actually happening but I bet they're inwardly cringing and wishing they had the sweet as pie I'm kicking about with. It's not the easiest thing to do though so I decide to hold onto it until I'm down at the river bed and eat it there where the scenery is a bit nicer. So I package it back up in its paper bag and run along the road, pie in hand, trying not to squish my precious bounty. 

I turn off out of the town and down towards, hopefully, another ford in the river. I'm in luck and soon enough I'm at the dry riverbed. I open up my pie again and damn it all it tastes even better than I remember from five minutes ago. 

It's a jolly saunter along taking a break to eat and as I look around at the scrub and stones I'm pretty content with my lot right now. Once the pie is done I take a nice big slurp of water and set off on my way running again. 

I say running. There is a bit of that but I check the map and it looks like I've got a good twelve to fourteen kilometres on this terrain so I immediately work out a game plan. I'm not going to manage running all the way back but as the first section of today's run was all flat I built up a bit of pace there so can afford to take my time on this. 

A bit knackered now...

I mentally tell myself that this is fortitude training. I'm going to be expending a lot of energy for little gain in distance. These rocks are already really painful underfoot. But I need to just keep telling myself that this is what I need to do if I hope to do some harder races later down the line that are going to hurt a hell of a lot more than this. So I walk a bit. I run a bit. I walk. I run. I settle into my rhythm and find that I'm doing less walking than I expected and getting better progress than I'd thought I would when I decided to go for this route back. I thought I'd probably just walk this whole section. I've not done any training in weeks and now I'm doing somewhere over seventy kilometres in two days. Not the smartest training plan but hey I'm having fun right?

I reach the first ford which I think is the one I went up to the town from earlier. I tick this off as the first checkpoint on this leg of the journey. I check the map and there are a few more...

A bit more knackered now...

After a while I find the edge of a pool of water. It's interesting to see as I'm aware that in winter this would be a raging torrent rather than just a trickle at the end of a pool. That's about as deep as I'm going to get today though. Get it...deep? I make myself laugh. Perhaps only myself though. It's hot and I'm tired leave me be.

It's nice to dip my shoes in and get a bit of a cool down for them and I again take a moment here to do that before pressing on. The pool is also caused by the base of a bridge support so it's another mental tick on my made up checkpoint list. 

I press on and it becomes apparent it wasn't actually a pool but indeed the head of the emaciated river as it slowly turns from a pool and a trickle into a stream then goes on to split across the riverbed and weave it's way back and forth. Nice. More river crossings. 

My run and walk plan has surprisingly not failed yet and I'm still keeping an okay pace given the circumstances. My mood also hasn't dropped which is even better as it is quite a slog and I'm really not going that fast but spirits are high which is always a bonus. 

Soon enough the river crossings become more frequent and a bit harder to get across as the bottom of the river bed is quite silty so I keep getting loads of stones in my shoes and having to stop to try to get them out. It's annoying but not the end of the world. After all I'm not racing so who cares about a bit of extra stopping and starting?

As I'm heading up to the second the last ford I get a call from Tom wondering where I am. I explain I'm on the riverbed and have a few kilometres to go and he goes through explaining how I can easily get off the riverbed onto the road. It takes a while but I eventually get across that I want to be down here on this terrain. I think I also get across that I'm a bit special. I offer for him to come and join me and he politely declines, preferring to do a bit of road running another day as much as he loves nature. I tell him I'll be back in half an hour and will see him then. 

Proper buggered by now.

I plod on the last final stretch to the bridge at Points Road and clamber up the river bank back to the road. I start along on the final kilometre and a half and after the slog on stones and rocks I tear up the pace. It's a really good high to end on after what's turned out to be quite a nice day. 

I turn into the farm and Tom announces it's weird seeing me in sports gear after many years of it being him doing all the sport not me. He asks how long I've been going and I explain it's around forty five kilometres and six slow hours. 

He nearly spits out his coffee and calls me a retard. 

In case you hadn't got enough of my retarded selfies...here's a montage of this damn fine specimen.