Waiaturua circuit

Another jam packed day and probably one for the running geeks out there. The day started early. At 7am we headed to the old home of Arthur Lydiard’s. For those that didn’t see yesterdays blog post Lydiard was a legendary Kiwi running coach - who many argue has had a greater impact on distance running over the 20th century than any other person. During the 50’s, and 60’s he coached a great number of local runners to world records and Olympic titles, including Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee and Bill Baillie. Quite an achievement considering his athletes all lived within a few miles of his home!! Part of Lydiard’s training routine included sending his boys on a 22mile run around the Waiatarua circuit. This began at his home and headed on up into the Auckland hills (there is no flat around the city). The route is still run today and people come from all over the world to do it now. It is a savage course and definitely one for the hardcore. Only one of the group attempted to do the whole thing while the rest of us just did part of it. Most people in the group ran 17miles of it and took around 2hrs or so. It was a big effort and most people were pretty tired. It seems crazy to think that Lydiard’s boys used to do this a few times a week! No wonder they were so good.

Afterwards we were lucky enough to have a talk from two of the guys - Barry Magee and Bill Baillie. Barry had some of his medals including his bronze medal from the 1960 Rome Olympic Marathon. His stories and memories were really inspirational and left the group wanting to go back out and do another Waiatarua circuit (maybe not that inspired ;) ).


Barry Magee showing us the vest he ran the Rome Olympics in!

In the afternoon we drove out to Piha beach, which has its own TV show in New Zealand called ‘Piha search and rescue’. Despite the waves being a little dangerous the beach itself was really nice. We played some ball games and took some photos (of course).


Piha beach

In the evening we headed up the Sky Tower in Auckland. The peak is 300 meters or so high and we went up to the viewing platform which stands at a measly 220m. After my bout of vertigo we were able to enjoy the views and Andrea played around on the glass floors. I walked across them but I couldn’t look down!!


Brave Andrea!!

Tomorrow we are heading out of Auckland and down to Rotorua where we will be for the next four days. We will be seeing in the new year in traditional New Zealand style (bed at around 11pm I think) and then Andrea has her race on new years day. Exciting stuff.