THE MIGHTY JO CARREL: Whoopsies half of January and all of February...

Life at Fort Torrington got a bit more exciting at the end of January with the arrival of two baby pussy cats in attempt to fill the void which my dear friend Murfy left behind. I'll blame these two for my serious lacking of blogging over this time...

Baby kitties

Perving kitties

The two little kitty cats (Duff - nothing to do with my obsession with The Simpsons game... and Sigi - after the town we spent six weeks in Germany in) are very cute but make leaving for training in the morning a bit difficult as they are always keen to get outside which makes getting bikes outside and leaving on time a bit hard without people escaping. But it does make coming come at the end of the day a bit more exciting when two little faces are waiting at the door for you.

Let us out

We certainly haven't bonded yet like the bond I had with Murfy but I am sure that will come.

In triathlon related news I have officially entered Auckland Half Ironman so am trying to train seriously for it. I have even shown my face at the O'Hagan's twice with a couple of rather embarrassing results but on the up side I can only improve and I took 20seconds off my time on my second run so if I keep that up I'll be in the low 18's in no time...;) Running at Stroke and Stride is starting to feel a bit better and I even cracked the top 15 for the second time this season last week, nothing to do with the fact that all the young fast girls were at the ITU race in Australia of course. But despite being slow I am uninjured which is all I ever want so I will take it. We had a delicious run along the Huka Falls track in Taupo in the weekend while we were spectating IMNZ and the Bowden's took it easy on me on the downhills so I was able to keep up the whole way. I rolled my ankle a couple of weeks ago running downstairs offroad so I am extra super paranoid (rather than just my usual super paranoid) when running downhill at the moment.

We attempted to do the Rangitoto Swim a couple of weeks back which is a 4.6km swim from Rangitoto to St Heliers across the channel. I wouldn't normally do a 4.6km swim but this one is a bit more interesting and a whole heap of people we knew had signed up which would make it a bit more fun. Sadly they decided to use the alternative course because the wind forecast was a bit too strong and they were worried about people's safety, pffft...

Obviously not the day of the Rangitoto swim

So we did a 3.2km (hopefully it was longer than this otherwise we are all very slow) loop course around the inner harbour - boring. But at least we got something for our money because in other years they have cancelled due to bad weather and not offered an alternative. I somehow managed to win my age group so I think the rest of the AG must have been filled up with cripples. I have become a bit of a cripple since the race after a nasty timing chip strap tore up my ankle.

Ouch

Our trip down to Taupo for Ironman New Zealand was very exciting - IMNZ weekend is my favourite weekend of the year. We were mostly down there to watch our friend Nick but also knew heaps of other people doing it as well. Nick had a good race despite becoming a first time Dad in December and there were some other notable performances which have riled me up to get fit and get fast. IMNZ 2015 look out!