At the end of last year I had a talk to Faify about signing up for the 5km fun run in Rotorua. I wanted us to do a special challenge together and I don't think you could find a better one than that. I've done it before and I wanted to do it again but I needed a little bit of inspiration, and that came in the form of Faith.
On Jan 1st we started off by running around our block and over the past 4 months we've built up to the point where on Saturday we achieved our goal, and even exceeded it.....running 5.72km without stopping!
I am soooo proud of my Faithy K. Some days when I told her to put her shoes on she put them on quickly and walked out the driveway with a smile, others she dragged her feet, grumbled, put it off and even cried. I hated forcing her to do it but we had a goal and I knew she'd feel so proud of herself on D day. And boy was I right. Faithy you're a star. You did a hard thing and had the grit you needed to see if through even when you wanted to give up. You inspired me to keep putting one foot in front of the other when I wanted to quit soooo badly.
And now that we've got one run under our belt, we've got 3 more lined up. So the training continues. We'll keep on pounding the pavement around Ranui. Next time we'll try to come in quicker. Can we do it? Of course we can!
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| 2 teams for dinner in Matamata. I was leader of the McDs crew. Dad captained the KFC team |
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| Equally excited and nervous at this point |
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| Such a cool vibe down at the start/finish line |
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| Done! Faith smashed it. She even said it wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. We stayed together till about 4km but then I was too slow for her so she ran off about a hundred metres ahead. I couldn't have caught up to her even if I tried |
Afterwards we had a big swim in the motel pool which was like a big spa, then we headed off to the Redwoods Forest for a wander. Such a great place!
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| Lots of inner māori warrior comes out in Rotorua |
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| Whakarewarewa but not coin divers today |
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| Casual krispy kreme stop on the side of the road. All the other kids ate theirs in about 20 seconds and then we had to sit and wait while this fairy took forever to nibble at hers. No food allowed in the car cause I vacuumed it before we left for the weekend! |
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| At 5pm we finally got to go up to the luge. The night rides were way cheaper than going in the day...and we loved doing it at night with all the cool lights and shorter lines |
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| A tad nervous before her first ride |
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| I bought Faithy a special necklace and keeper postcard from the bookshop to remember her first run weekend |
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| Topped of with Wendys |
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| Stopping in at Grandma and Uncles for egg sammies on the drive |
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| Seth and Dalls gave Grandma Julie some rashuns incase she was a big hungry |
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| Nice Dalls....she did this on purpose |
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| Terrible photo of cool as car/truck/mini mac. Yes, I still love things mini sized or super sized |
What a top weekend, for so many different reasons. Challenge completed, family time in spades.
We all loved it and now the cool thing is that we've got another one planned for Mt Manunganui in August and Kerikeri in November. Bring on the runs/family weekends
