On the 16th of May a friend of ours called Dan came to Auckland to sell some shoes at a running event. We decided to go along and check it out.
The event was held in the Hunua Ranges which is about a 20 minute drive from Papakura.It was the first race in a series called the Xterra Auckland trail run series.
Everyone gathered for some instructions before the race.
And I told you, on that email, I said it's al … the sun's always shining and the birds are always chirping. And I wasn't lying. Big yellow's out and he's spying on us today. So it's a pretty awesome way to start the series out here. Dan's out here from, ah, Innov-8. If you guys don't have any off-road shoes and you're tackling this, ah, course today, you're going to have a lot of fun out there. Ah, a couple of tracks are pretty, pretty grim, pretty slippery, so I'm pretty sure when you come back you'll probably be paying him a visit. Specially cause we're at Riverhead next, and that gets grubby as anything. All I'm going to say about this long and super long course is save some for the second half. First half is pretty friendly, pretty nice. Second half is absolutely brutal.
There were 4 courses: short, mid, long and super long.
The athletes had to walk through some chemicals in their running shoes to help protect the forests from some kind of disease.
The first race to start was the long and super long courses. A bit later the mid course started, and then the short course.
Dan continued selling shoes before during and after the race.
During the race it started raining quite heavily, so we watched people finishing from under the tent. Luckily the rain stopped after a while, so we could get a bit closer to the finish line. This is Reece, the guy who came first in the mid course.
Lots of people had a massage after the race. It seemed like the perfect way to end the day.
language notes big yellow = the sun grim = unappealing, unattractive, or depressing grubby = dirtybrutal = violent and cruel links Watch today's show at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdZYMnKsmx0 http://thedailyenglishshow.blogspot.com/2010_07_03_archive.html
