In the zone

Too wet when I first got up to entice me out on a run. After about an hour, it seemed that it had actually stopped raining and I prepared to go out, and there was a sudden and short cloudburst. After this, the rain desisted for long enough for me to have an hour out running beside the beach and then up to the main road and back home, buying the Weekend Herald on the way.

At the northern end of Snells Beach was this group of 11 Pied Oystercatchers (torea is their Maori name). I approached carefully and slowly, taking the occasional picture. Then, quite abruptly the bird which is higher up the beach in this picture, as it was previously, hopped up and down. Immediately, the other ten birds all started hopping away from where I was. I stayed still, and they settled back and it was then that I managed to get close enough to see that the ten had their heads tucked away from the wind coming in off the bay, and the 11th appears to be a sentry.

These birds are in the zone between the water and the high tide mark. They also seem to be in a zone between awake and asleep.

I carried on in my run. I walk up the steepest part of the climb up to the main road; near the top of the hill there is one bit which is of a gentle gradient and when I feel as I did this morning I break into a slow run. Seeing a couple walking towards me, I kept running all the way to the top and then home along the side of the main road. For the first time in almost ten years I was in the zone which I associate with long distance running. Totally focussed on the rhythm of breathing and the cadence of feet on the road. It felt good.

Early afternoon S and I drove back to Auckland and out to the airport to collect Tsuken and his two children for their two week stay. Rained all the way down and all the way back, and almost ever since we got back (it was apparently fine here for an hour or two mid afternoon, allowing C and her boys to hit the beach).

Fish and chips for dinner, children's baths and stories, Grandpa's blip, with a game of Bananagrams over a nice malt to end the day.

The zone of happiness.