Starting to feel a little more settled here in Christchurch. We both always feel rather dislocated in a new place (most people probably do) until we find our bearings. Knowing this on the first day we got the bus into town, sussed the lay of the land, bought a bus pass and visited the supermarket. Almost feel like a local now.

Boy oh boy is that a long flight. Feel it’s longer that way round (via the US). Only the US could have everyone fill in a visa, get processed through immigration for a 1 hour wait in transit before handing back our visas and getting on the plane. They wonder why the rest of the world views them so badly – it’s not only the big things that paint this picture but the stupid pettiness of this sort of thing. Nearly got sidetracked there! It must have been a 10 hour flight to LA and then 12.5 hours to Auckland, followed by an hour to Christchurch. Luckily I managed about 6 hours sleep on each which means I’ve almost got into the time zone already.

Both of us are suffering from the back ends of colds. Jo suffering alot more than me and still isn’t training properly. I’ve only just feel almost recovered today – which means I’ve been ill for about 10 days.

Yesterday we both got out to do a short ride. We did this lovely loop round the coast to the south of Christchurh. The town abuts onto mountains to the south. Not high by NZ standards but still as higher than the North Yorkshire moors. As a result we ended up doing two of the biggest local climbs. At the top of Dyers pass we felt completely spent. It was 2pm and it’s only now we realise that the temperatures yesterday were 40c !! No wonder we felt so bad. We got back and both flaked out for several hours before heading to Brighton Beach for a picnic ! It’s quite funny all the British place names repeated here.

Today I’ve felt alot better and managed to get a proper days training in. I ran to and from the pool where I did a 5.1km session. Jo and I then headed out on the bikes this time North West towards the Southern Alps deciding Oxford sounded like a nice place to visit. At one point we rode for about an hour on a dead straight flat road without a single junction ! Jo was still not feeling great and came back directly. I took a slightly longer loop ending with 75 miles. I ran 7 miles off the bike to round off a good day.