Sunshine and heavy showers today – April showers with attitude – so we’ve not ventured out since Parkrun this morning, where I got well and truly soaked. Looked more like I’d been swimming than running.

There is a NZ parkrun in Cambridge, about half-hour drive away, so it was a no-brainer as to whether I was going to do it. Couldn’t persuade Big Sis to come along though. I finished in fifth place, and first in my age category. OK, there were only fourteen runners, but first is first.

Having done Cambridge NZ parkrun, I now have to do Cambridge UK to complete the double. The Future Mrs Barefoot is up for a trip there before the year is out (she probably realises that if she does Cambridge UK I will have to bring her to NZ so she can also complete the double).

I think the worst of the rain may be over for the day. I’m basing that on the fact that the cat has removed herself from the warmth of the sofa and ventured into the conservatory.

Yesterday was another showery day, but as mum and I were travelling about we managed to miss most of the rain and had quite a good day, weather-wise. We went to Taupo, which is the town on the north of that big lake in the middle of north island. There are some spectacular rapids in the river just outside the town that we stopped at too – 200,000 litres of water per second. As that amount is hard to imagine, they would take ten seconds fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.

Thursday, we went over to Cambridge, the town where Big Sis works, and met her for lunch. We had a quick recce of the parkrun too. This starts at the velodrome, so we went to have a look at that. There were a few cyclists having a practice session there, and was quite interesting to watch. I didn’t realise how steep the banking is at the ends; you don’t get that impression on the TV, but it is so steep it would be difficult to walk up. “thirteen more laps of the warm-up” called the trainer. I think that for me thirteen more laps would have been the entire event!