Today was the last day of netball. And a lovely sunny day too. Sophie's team has had their ups and downs over the season, but ended on a high note, winning 20:10. Sophie scored about half of her team's goals, and was thrilled!

Bern is the coach of the team, which is made up of girls from the three local schools.

Elanor didn't play today as she felt unwell. So I don't have a photo of her or her team.

A new computer AT LAST

I have been away at a national Playcentre meeting this weekend, presenting papers for a working party I have been on. Turned out to be very busy, but the working party is now disbanded, so fewer weekends away in future. (Yay!)

On Saturday, via a flurry of text messages, we agreed to get me a new computer, and Bern went out and purchased it. So I arrived home to find it set up and good to go! Great excitment. (Thanks, Bern.)

I've been frustrated with my set up for a while (crashing and so forth), and I keep finding new software that I can't run on my old machine. It was time to bite the bullet and pay for a new harddrive. (I'm now going to be wanting some new software - inevitable expense!) Apart from having to get my files off the old machine I just have to adjust the settings to how I want them.

The new machine has a DVD player. Bern's computer already had one, but my machine has the big screen, so much better for watching movies. We haven't had TV in the house for 10 years, so this is going to be popular with the kids I'm sure. Two problems here: other house members wanting MY computer to watch DVDs; and ME wasting time watching them!

Round the Bays Photos

They have finally got the photos from the Round the Bays funrun up on the web. These are commercial photos and can't be saved to disk, so I can't put on the blog, but you can see me finish at this link. I don't know how long these links will work, but they are good today.

Bernard is here.

Sophie is here.

Jerusha is here.

Round the Bays 3

Well, what a gorgeous day was turned on for the run! Overcast at first (which keeps the heat down), with the lightest breeze. By the time we had been going 20 minutes the clouds cleared, but I had the sun behind me at that stage, so, perfect. I really appreciated the water station at the 3.5k mark, and several people were spraying their hoses across the road to cool people down, which was also really good. (A fire engine was doing the same thing at one point.) One of the houses along the way has a patio over a street-front garage, and a small live band was up there singing and playing over loud speakers.

It was quite exciting being is such a large crowd (about 11,000 people). Bern was ahead (he ran the first 1/2 of the course before his first walking break), and Sophie and her friend Jerusha were behind me after the first 1k or so. I found a good strategy was to choose a person and let them set the pace, and if I needed to have a walk, I would just choose someone else when I was ready to run again. There was one guy who carried two plain blue flags the whole race. I guess he was with a group, but he was very useful to me as he was going at about the right pace, and was very visable. Sometimes I would be behind him, and just keep up; sometimes I would be ahead for a while, and he would pass me while I had a walk. I think I finished the course just ahead of him.

At the end we were given water and bananas. The girls came in a bit later, and we missed them in the crowd, so we spent over 1/2 an hour looking for them. Lots of entertainment, food stalls, etc at the park at the end. It would be really good to be with a big group, and there were lots of corporate groups. We saw a few people we knew. We queued for the free sausages and then queued for the free bus back to the start point (where we'd left the car).

And my time? I was aiming to make the 7km in 60 minutes. The times will be confirmed in tomorrow's paper, but on arrival I was told I'd done about 46 minutes. I was stoked! (This might vary depending on how long it took for me to reach the start line after the hooter.)

Round the Bays

One of my new year's resolutions was to "exercise more". Given that I was starting from a reletively low base last year (not even as much walking as usual), this has been quite achievable so far. I've been going for a brisk walk every other day, and adding in a bit of jogging too.

I've decided to do the Round the Bays walk/run on the 18th. If you haven't seen it, go here. Bern is doing the "run" version and Sophie and I are doing the walk. Though, to achieve my time goal I'll need to put some jogging in too. It's a bit of a chore training round here though. Any direction we go in involves a stiff hill at some point - often just before getting home again! My 'brisk walk' today was down the hill to town - 35 minutes at lunchtime. The bus took care of the hill climb. :-)