That's more like it!

Another Saturday morning 5K in Prospect Park, The Central Park Founders 5K in tribute to the guy that had founded the Central Park Track Club.

After another uncomfortable couple of weeks, the humidity finally broke on Wednesday night. I did a speed session of sorts on Thursday morning and felt amazing... the fresh air and lack of humidity was I'm guessing like the feeling you'd get if you've been away training at altitude and come back down to sea level so I was hoping for a better time than the last one two weeks ago.
A slightly later start time of 9am, and although the sun was out and it was hot under the sun, the lack of humidity was noticeable and probably 90% of the course in in shade.

When I got to the start line it turned out a tree had fallen down and hit someone earlier on so the start was delayed 30 minutes. Unfortunate for the guy, who was apparently alright and bad news for us as it meant I had to pass the time by sitting on a bench for 20 minutes meditating, watching the swans etc.

The smaller 389 finisher field start

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A woman who is maybe connected to the CPTC took some photos and I popped up in a couple.

Then when we lined up at the start we were informed that because the start had to be moved up a few hundred metres they didn't have time to realign the mile markers so they would be out. Plus the wrist strap on my Polar heart rate monitor had snapped on Thursday. So no mile splits and no heart rate! I don't really use the heart rate on a 5K race but it's nice to see the averages etc afterwards.
So basically I just ran! First time in ages I've not looked at my watch or anything and just ran on feeling, knowing how fast I can hold for a 5K while knowing the course obviously helped.

© 2013 SmugMug, Inc.

I was pleasantly surprised to finish in 19.14 (6.12 mile pace, 62nd/389), about 26 seconds slower than my best time from May's month of supreme fitness, ha ha.

Then a jog up to the farmer's market where I picked up a raspberry danish, a cherry pie pocket, a sweet onion and goat cheese focaccia and some carrot cake.

The week that was

Getting into my shipping and receiving job. Although I need to get into it fast so I can help train a couple of other people! None of the managers even know how to do a lot of the stuff so when I take a day off and the other part-time guy isn't on there is a crap load of things to do the next day I'm in!

I switched my days around so we could go to a concert on Thursday night. During the summer Prospect Park has a lot of free performances and a handful of benefit shows to do with Celebrate Brooklyn so we purchased tickets for one of the benefit shows to see the Scottish group Belle & Sebastian.

A different type of show than normal. There was the regular standing room up front if you were eager but the majority of people take rugs and sit on the grassy slopes, at least until the show starts. They have a lot of different food and drink on sale plus an Etsy store, which if you know what Etsy is, tells you the type of crowd it was catering too.
So we took along our new camp chairs and a little bag of homemade food and juice, gotta save our money for all the future gig tickets we've bought recently.

One of the highlights was getting a lot of folk out of the crowd to dance on stage for a couple of songs, really funny to watch.

Friday night I was back in soccer action. A couple of teams I've played for needed some players for a cup night so I played 30min games with no break, the first outfield and the next two in goal!
During the second game it started raining and during the third it was torrential. It was so bad all the stuff in the bottom of my bag got soaked and I kept having to ring out my gloves and t-shirt.
When we went to the bar afterwards everyone took turns changing in the toilet into whatever slightly dryer clothes they had with them.

Then with my quads a little sore this morning, I sleepily got out of bed just after 7am for a 5K in Prospect Park. The baseball MLB All Star Game is back in New York so they had a tie-in with the race with proceeds to the Hurricane Sandy relief fund.

NYRR

It was "only" 69 degrees but the humidity was apparently 93%, I say apparently but it was high as the sweat was running down my forehead.
I am starting another training programme for some other races but it's proving difficult in the heat. Steady runs are fine but trying to do any ind of speedwork is real hard. I tried running before work on Tuesday but midday is not a good time to run, no shit, and I was dead on my feet.
So with the lack of training and the humidity I was a whole two minutes slower than back in May and even a minute slower than June's 5K. I know I did a tonne of training in the Spring, so much so that my pace was faster for 13M in May than it was for 3M today!

Just seen tonight's news and the weather forecast is for temperatures in the 90's all next week, "and it'll feel like over 100".... great :-(

4th Of July

We were invited up to our friends (Stephen who presided over our wedding ceremony) lake house just over the border in Connecticut for their 4th of July party.
For once I was off work and didn't need to go searching for someone to cover shifts, which will be more difficult now that I'm the shipper until I can help train someone else!

We caught the train from Grand Central Station, heading an hour and 20mins north east to Brewster, NY.

We got picked up at the station and driven over the border and to their weekend getaway which is an amazing house by Ball Pond Lake. All the properties around there are pretty spectacular and very American! Even more so yesterday as nearly everyone had their stars & stripes on display. Especially the new neighbours with their giant flag and range of lake inflatables, etc.

Apparently the new neighbours were disturbing the peace with something called "kids" and had $6000 of fireworks lined up for later.

Our place was a little classier, ha ha.

The boathouse

Fire it up!

Finding the shade

Totally relaxing, good food and it also happened to be someones birthday so some amazing homemade coconut cake and some patriotic cupcakes to finish the day.

We were offered the chance of a lift back to the city so given the choice between a car ride or fireworks & the train we took them up on their offer. So unfortunately we missed most of the firework display although when we drove home there were random fireworks going off on either side of the road behind the trees for a lot of the trip.
Also by the time we hit Manhattan we got stuck in the traffic from people leaving the Macy's fireworks display on the Hudson River!

Update

A little slow finishing the blog on our Hawaii trip but work gets in the way when you get back to normal life!

Speaking of which, I got a promotion of sorts. I had interviewed for a sideways promotion just before I left for Hawaii, a sales lead role instead of regular sales. All it would have meant was a $2+ an hour increase in pay and just to be a goto for the regular sales staff.

They had also talked about giving me some shadow shifts in the shipping & receiving department as the regular shipper was leaving on a year long cycle from Alaska southwards, that gives you an idea of the type of people who work here!

When I got back to work they called me in as they were going over the interviews and instead went and offered me the job of shipper. So I still get the same pay rise but it does mean a job shift.

I had roughly four days training and then armed with my manual that the shipper guy kindly made up for me, I was let loose last week on my own. The main change is that ALL the shifts are 1.30pm to 10pm but it does pass quickly as there seems a lot to fit in each day.
It also requires a bit of good time management, starting off with receiving the internet orders, staff orders and returned items, then shipping same things the other way out.

Then later on I get a bicep and quad workout as I receive the nightly truck with all the pallets laden with boxes, wheeling it up a small slope, occasionally grinding to a halt during this process! Dealing with everything from small boxes containing one bottle of insect repellant to lifting a kayak downstairs.

I'll still get some footwear shifts (at the same pay rate) so we'll see how it works out.

I have been commuting to and from work by bike all last week. It was so hot and humid that having a shower at work beforehand and then avoiding the sticky underground wait for a train home by cycling back home works better.
It is a thought to do a bike ride after working until 10pm but the weather is so warm plus I'm home in about 35 minutes as I take a more direct route due to less traffic on the roads, I just need to buy some more sets of padded bike shorts though!

Waimea Canyon

Out last trip involved a drive uphill to the top of the Waimea Canyon lookout.

There were some good sights on the drive up. The view out the back window over to the last island in the northern end of the chain, Niihau.

A cool banyan tree as we passed through a village and then the amazing roadside red dirt landscape.

The road was constantly uphill so pretty soon it changed from green to red by the roadside.

The view once we reached the top was up there with all the views we've had on this trip for sure.

This wasn't the top as such, so we drove upwards and around.
There was a mini stop at another viewpoint where we seen some of the islands wildlife. Some mountain hugging goats and another chicken just hanging out in the trees.

Can you spot them?

They get everywhere

Then we drove up to the last viewpoint, the Kalalau lookout.

Once we got all the way back down to sea level we made a short stop to see the spouting water feature.

A bit of shopping on the way back and we were most definitely done for the day.

We had the next day to ourselves after the family left so just another couple of supermarket trips for supplies and then spent the rest of the night and nearly the entire morning of the day we left trying to pack everything! We ended up taking a whole box as extra luggage filled with food supplies and wedding remnants. Which just reminded me that we have four ziplock bags full of the pulled pork in the freezer...... hmmmmm.

Wilelua Falls

Today was a short drive for some long-overdue waterfall action.

A small car park at the end of a road led to a nice view down over the waterfall.

For most of the tourists there, that was as close as they got. For the more adventurous among us there was a short steep muddy trip down to the waters edge.

We went as far round as was safe but we'd been warned against going near the falls themselves just in case!

The famous Hanakap'ai Hike

The hiking trail along the northern Na'Pali coast of Kauai is a very well known trail among hikers. It is regularly listed amongst the must-do trails in the US.
Of course, that is for the whole eleven mile trail which due to the amount of ascent and descent and the underfoot conditions normally means people hike to the beach at the end and camp either overnight or for a few days before coming back.

So we just did the taster hike which was a two mile walk to the first secluded beach. Obviously we stopped for photo ops and to pass other people as it was narrow in places but this still took us about one hour 40mins to get there and just over an hour to come back.

The surroundings were lush and as expected, the scenery amazing.

We passed a mixture of young & old folk, families, some hippies meditating in a small off-path cave and a few beardy hikers who were obviously on their way back from the eleven mile hike.
When we came round the final corner this was the view down to the beach.

There was a cool stream to cross and it gave me an opportunity to try and frame some good pics.

 The beach was very quiet compared to other beaches we'd been to, fairly obviously because it takes some effort to get there. You're not going to drag a cooler all the way there.

This was the last day of my sunburnt back so I still couldn't even carry a backpack on my shoulders!