Last years New Plymouth half marathon

I’m happy in New Plymouth. Work is fun. There are lots of challenges as a midwife, not least relearning paperwork and specifics for Taranaki Base Hospital after my most recent Cycle Tour. I really enjoy my colleagues, the personalities that crystallize on the shift work and the pressure of being midwives or nurses…

I’m getting back into shape running wise and I love the endorphins and the simplicity of trotting out of my front door. New Zealand offers some brilliant backdrops (and hills…).

The hardest thing I am coming up against is Nightshift.

My goals for this year are:

• 1.35 half marathon. My keenest time so far has been a 1.47.
•  completing my first full marathon, time irrelevant

The main problems for me right now are:

Excess weight and muscle in the wrong place: During cycle touring my 4 ft 11 inch frame gained about 5 pounds (could be a bit less or more, I don’t weigh myself often enough to know), from muscle and increased appetite from riding 50 miles+ a day. I feel big and rubbery while running at the moment. I’ve never had such muscular and heavy thighs.

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As New Years came in for New Zealand I was tackling the hills on the way home from a horrendously busy shift. Fireworks were being set off in the background. I was happy, breathing in the oaky, floral smell of kiwi plants at night. It was a pretty apt moment to cross into 2013.

A few partiers called ‘What are you doing?!’, obviously wondering why a tiny cyclist was  tearing up a hill in work clothes at midnight. And then I got in and James made me a cup of tea with chocolate digestives to see in the New Year.

 We have been frantically doing all the immigration tasks needed to move countries on a whim, hence why this blog is so out of date. I will finish off the tour story in more detail, but after India we saw Sydney, cycled from New South Wales across Mount Beauty and Falls Creek in Victoria, I got a job as a Midwife, and then we decided at the last minute we wanted to be in New Zealand. We’re talking an overnight decision; one day we were looking for flats in Bairnsdale, Victoria and the next we had booked flights to Auckland.

We cycled from Auckland down to Taranaki, which even after cycling in 15 countries is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We ended up in New Plymouth, which is where I started the tour from, having moved from Leicester (UK) to New Zealand January last year. I managed to get a contract with my old hospital, where I (mostly) adore working.

James had never been to New Zealand but happily wanted to give it a go…and here we are, living on some land we help maintain for rent, in a little cabin which is perfect for us. The chickens invite themselves in, we are growing leeks, and we have landlords called John and Caroline who do lovely things like drop us off oranges from their orchard.

There are many adventures in the pipeline, including hopefully a marathon this year. My post-tour legs may have other ideas …running right now makes me feel like one of those tree creatures from Lord of the Rings, thumping through the bush and scaring dogs and wildlife. I won’t say much more but beehives are definitely a possibility. As are a series of articles on how to survive working in difficult workplace environments.

And of course, more touring, though perhaps this time on road bikes!

our back door

We woke up in a small village. I never worked out the name, but it was one in a network of rural    villages between Mumbai and Goa. We were treated very kindly and given access to a bathroom, and had a quick chat with some ladies who ran the shop, who thought we were mad, but told us to come back if we were in the area. We were given Chai and a bucket to do the washing up with, and were watched by a suspicious crowd who were ostensibly on their way to work.

The road we biked out on could have been somewhere hilly and rural in the UK, a small tarmacked track with trees hanging down and warm sunshine. You could imagine colonial British ruffling their moustaches and thinking it might all be all right after all. it was like Devon with palm trees.

But then the beeping started again. Every car, lorry or other contraption felt the need to approach fast, wait until nearly level and then give you a blast with an air horn. So you’d be cycling, trying to get into a rhythm and not think about when you’d next need a toilet break or your spreading fungal nail infection when a BEEP-beep-BEEP would all but have you off your saddle. I have read blogs and books which mentioned the incessant horn use of India but nobody seems to know exactly what a honk means. ‘Namaste!’? ‘Fear my driving!’? ‘In India we are not used to seeing lycra bottoms!’? Or is it just to announce presence on the road?

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Rural India

I’m sat writing this in our host Dave’s house, enjoying cool monsoon air. I wasn’t expecting to be here now, let alone have a plane booked for Australia in two days time. It was an eventful ride.

 Mumbai has the type of rain that can wash away holy cows and eat campers for breakfast.

If you’re British and you think you see bad rain – you don’t. To put it in perspective, in the whole of England’s 2011/2012 winter, there was 330mm rain total. In Mumbai, they had 300mm just in this September.

But we didn’t know this as we cycled out of Mumbai. We knew getting to India in the post monsoon season was a bit risky, but the rest of the tour would have been thrown off by a few months if we’d have replanned. We also thought that ‘post-monsoon’ season would perhaps mean a fair few rainy days, but overall good cycling with cooler weather.

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Ganesha, Mumbai

I’m back in India. Before coming I felt the same anticipatory nerves that mothers have told me you feel before having your second baby. I was even more nervous this time as I knew what was coming. And this time we’re on bicycles.

Actually we haven’t done any cycling yet as we got a taxi from the station. We were going to ride despite the request of our couch surfing host Dave, who thinks we are mad, and whose detailed do’s and don’t on Mumbai could fill several guidebooks. But we’re going to need our cardboard bike boxes for flying off to our new existence in Australia after we have ridden to South to Goa and back up via Hampi, so have decided leave the boxes with Dave when we ride.

Mumbai is India’s biggest city. Like all of India it assaults every sense: psychopathic vechicles use their horns so frequently that your conversations have to be snatched in staccato; painted paisleys, mosaics and deities are on every truck, shop and free wall; you breathe in the aroma of hot butter and spice smells from the snack stands deeply until you gag at the stench of ammonia from old urine and rotting beach side rubbish tips; begging children tug at your arms.

Add to this Mumbai’s population of 20.6 million, an alarming 55% of who come from the slums, and even day to day activities like walking along the pavements become an engrossing challenge.

And then there are the rats.

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