How beautiful it is

It has occured to me that it might be nice for you to see some pictures of my race earlier on this week. I only took two on the day, not wanting to look like a dick taking photos of myself/on my own, so the first one is of the real thing, and the second two are from the day after, when  I repeated the track, but instead I walked it. 

 

Can you see the masses of people? Yes, those are people up ahead that look like whiteish sand. Now imagine them trying to squeeze through a gate the with the same width as that of a small car. Not ideal for running. This was at the beginning, within the first 1km. Yes, I am way at the back. Just go read Tuesday's post.

What I really wanted to focus on though, was how beautiful this part of my city is. My house is in the perfect part of town, because the river is honestly a five minute walk away (maybe less), and the centre of town is only 20 minutes. I hear people complain about Palmerston North all the time, but it really is so easy to get around, and find lovely walks and tracks.

This part of the track is along the river, and it is one of my favourite places to be. In October they did fireworks off those cliffs, which were amazing, and we could easily see them from our house. Palmerston North used to be forest and swamp, and the crazy Scandinavians cleared it and settled here. Not a bad choice, IMO! There were Maori living here before that, and they called it "Papaioea", which according to Wikipedia, means "How beautiful it is". They were not wrong!

Today I am off with my mum to walk the track again, as part of our preparation for doing another New Zealand track - the Tongariro Crossing - which is this: /

image credit

 Haha, only joking. Well, kind of. The Tongariro, including Mt Ngauruhoe, which you can see while on the crossing, was used as Mordor/Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. And I'm going with my mum to walk across it. No biggie!

So, today we are doing a 20km walk to practise how it will feel with our backpacks and coats and lunch. We'll be walking along the river, even though it will almost all be completely flat, and part of the Tongariro is known as 'the Devil's staircase', which doesn't sound as though it's too far from the image above, really... Even so, it will be really nice to get out of the house in our last month of Summer, in such a pretty place.  #hometownlove!