Turning 40

On the 25th of Jan I turned 40. A traditional milestone but not one I'd given a huge amount of thought.

It is a time for reflection though. Leaving my 30's behind I can't help but look back on what was a pretty good 10 years for me.

Started off by getting married.

Shortly after which I ran my first marathon in Copenhagen.

Later that year ran my second marathon in Berlin, followed by a magical trip to Greece.

The next year involved a little bit of travel, Portugal for my 31st birthday, Paris to run a marathon with my dad.

Marathon number 4 in Nottingham

And then Baby #1.

don't I look young and slim. Oh yeah, and there's Theo :)

At some point along the way we finished walking the Thames Path which was a really special adventure for me and Jackie. (Note we've not yet finished blogging about the Thames path but will hopefully get that don'e at some point)

We really packed a lot in to 2010 and 2011!

With Theo the types of adventures we had were different. I started a blog about coffee shops in SW London, it gained a bit of traffic and was good fun.

We went to the 2012 London Olympics, I blogged about it quite a bit.

In 2013 I was offered a job back in NZ.We did one final European trip to Croatia, our first Europe trip with Theo.

We moved back to NZ, leaving on Theo's birthday, and the day after Jackie had submitted her UK citizenship application.

We bought a house before Christmas that year.

We had fund exploring NZ again, Waikato region, Coromandel, and Bay of Plenty locations mainly.

2015 bought baby #2, just as life was getting easier :) SO it was another couple of years of hard graft. Claudia was lovely but babies aren't easy.

Some great family holidays with extended family in Nelson, Mt Maunganui, Ohiwa, Otautu Bay, Rotorua, Taupo, Gisborne, Patumahoe and Waiu Pa.

Also great connecting with friends again around NZ.

A couple more years of hard graft, some decent job progress, another marathon and then an offer of a job in Newcastle, Australia in 2018. We were ready for another move so off we went.

Newcastle has been great, the kids have mainly loved it, it's been awesome to be living close to the beach, there's a bit more going on here, life is easy and Jackie has been able to get her art career underway with some great success. The job has been good too.

2019 brought another couple of marathons, one at Noosa where good friends from NZ joined us. We had a nice mini holiday there.

Noosa Marathon recovery

Second marathon was on Gold Coast. I drove there with both kids, it was about 8 hour drive, it was great to go on that road trip with them, just the three of us. Hard work though, Theo had a cold and it was a long way but helped develop me as a parent! My mum joined us on the GC which was awesome, we had a great support crew rewarded with a trip to Sea World after the marathon.

GC Marathon with support crew

Recently most of the highlights come from the family. Theo is enjoying and succeeding at school. Theo is so good at giving things a go, tennis, golf, nippers, drum corp, swimming. It is a shame his school doesn't have a proper playing field, that's one thing he definitely misses. We're pretty happy with the way Theo is turning out, so far.

Claudia is such a joy, loves kindy, has so much energy and emotion (mostly positive), is so thoughtful kind and caring.

The kids are at a great age, it might never be this good again.

It's not always this good.

With the kids going well, Jackie and I have more time together and also more time to ourselves which is healthy.

It makes me reflect that I really need to appreciate the role my parents had in making the person I am today. It wasn't always easy but in the end I'm happy with the person I've become and have my family to thank for giving me the opportunities I've had.

Thanks Mum and Dad.

So as I head in to my 40's I do wonder what the next 10 years might hold. I'd be very happy if it wasn't as eventful as my 30's but then I didn't set out to do all the stuff above in my 30's so I'm not going to rule anything out.

If I was to set myself a few goals for my 40's I've thought of a few, but then I'd like to think there are some things that'll I'll do in my 40's that I hadn't even thought of or considered.

Anyway, so possible goals for my 40's:

- end my 40's with a wife and 2 kids - the same ones I have now :)
- complete a master's degree
- have run 30 marathons (23 more than what I finished my 30's with)
- have a go at starting a company

What's interesting about a lot of what I remember about my 30's and what I want to achieve in my 40's is that work and my job really aren't at the centre of it. I enjoy my job, I'm quite good at it which helps but it really is just an enabler to me spending quality time with my family. I think I'm very luck to be in that position nd suspect at some point I won't always be so fortunate, but in the meantime I'm happy to make hay while the sun shines.

Kirikiriroa Marathon 2018

Given a goal for this year is marathon related I thought I should catch-up on my  marathon posts.

In the UK I did 4 marathons, I think I blogged the other ones (Just checked, no think I started blogging after the first 2.

Anyway, marathon V was Kirikiriroa, my home town at the time in Hamilton, 2018.

It had been 7 years since my last marathon, Nottingham and while I'd tried to stay fit I had a long road to go to get marathon ready. Marathon training with young children was not so easy. Not least because a 3 hour training run means 3 hours of time missed with the kids. So my training was no where near as intense as when I was in London without kids.

But I was determined to get back to running so slow and steady I got in to it. I was only doing 2-3 proper runs in a week, with quite a few very short runs to work in the meantime.

A new development for my training was that I had a GPS watch, a standard Garmin watch which not only kept my time but how far I ran and mapped my runs for me. I'd resisted getting a Garmin for a while but actually really appreciated having it as it helped with motivation.

The Kirikiriroa marathon runs along the banks of the Waikato River, which is a relatively narrow, quite undulating path. I did all my long runs along here so knew what I was getting myself in for.

I was training to be able to do the marathon in under 6min/ks.

Another thing I tried for this marathon was energy gels. It was hard to know if they were helping but it seems it's the standard thing to do now so I figure it must be the right thing to do.

On the day, our friend Ann picked me up, she was also running the marathon. It was dark when we arrived. The crowds were minimal, unlike any of the previous four marathons, really just a couple of hundred people maybe.

We were quite early, so a fair bit of standing around.

The start was cool, they had a Maori challenge to get us underway which was great. The sun was beginning to rise as we took off.

Hills right from the start, a very slow first km. Slowly in to a rhythm. Hopefully the Strava frame below works which shows the map, time etc. If you're on Strava you should be able to see more details via the link


I made it under 4h 12m which was my goal, I was fading real fast towards the end but was happy in the end.

So I was back on the running wagon, no more marathons in 2018 but two in 2019 which I'll write up soonish, hopefully before I get on to #VIII.

2020

New Year Resolutions for 2020

1. Run 4 marathons
2. Run a marathon under 3h 50m
3. Do some study (maybe a few MOOCs, possible Google Digital Marketing Cert). I really should do a masters given work would pay but just not sure what.
4. Get back in to blogging

So, last resolution first and here we are. I figure blogging will be a good distraction from work and I'm keen to ensure that our adventures are recorded because I'll forget them all by the time the kids are actually interested.  Need to catch-up on the past 6 years to start with. I noticed I still have some blogs in drafts from years ago.

Oh yeah, and looking at the stats for our blog, we were still getting plenty of traffic to our blog last year, even though we hadn't posted for 6 years. I'm sure you're dying to know, most popular blog was about Lisbon. and second was one of my blogs about shoes, I can see a follow up to that coming up soon.

So hopefully more to come this year.