John Walker

This is a story that begins months ago, on the trip to Devonport with Jay and Bron. At the time I was looking for a book: No Bugles, No Drums, about Peter Snell. It is a fairly rare book and I had a hard time finding it in the states. We were walking down a strip mall and there was a rare books store so I thought I would drop in and see if they had it. To my surprise, they did, the owner also brought out two copies of a book called "John Walker: Champion," one of which was autographed. I got No Bugles, No Drums for 40$ and the not signed one for 20$ as I had, at the time, no idea who this guy was. It took me some time to get around to reading this book. When I finished I was very impressed. It turns out that John Walker was, among other things, the first man to break 3:50 in the mile (3:49.4). When I finished the book I got on Wikipedia to see what else I could learn about this guy. The last sentence of the wikipedia article was that John Walker currently owns an equestrian store in Newmarket (I live in Parnell, which is adjacent to Newmarket). I quickly discovered that there is only one equestrian store in Newmarket and that it was actually only .7k from my flat. This I was very excited about. It took me some time to actually get there however. 1st I didn't actually trust the wikipedia, I didn't think that he actually owned this store that I walk by every time I go for groceries and 2nd it said that he was diagnosed with Parkinson's 12 years ago, and I thought that the chance he was still actually running the store was really low.

On the 30 of April at about noon I was going down to the climbing store to buy myself a sling and I decided, completely spur of the moment to stop by and ask if he actually did own the store. I walked in and there was an older lady and a highly attractive younger one pretty close to my age sitting behind the counter. I started out with: "So, I have kind of a random question to ask you: who owns this shop?" The girl pointed at the lady and I got combined "she does/I do" after which followed a slightly confused pause on my part and I slurred out something to the effect of ohiseeiheardsomewherethat
JOHNWALKERdidandijustwantedtoseeifthatwastrue. I'm pretty sure that the only thing intelligible out of the whole thing was his name. The Lady responded, very politely that "John Walker is my husband, he's out in Newmarket right now at the bank, but he's due back shortly, come back later this afternoon and you can meet him if you would like."

Needless to say I decided to go back that afternoon. I left the shop, quite awkwardly upon retrospect, and bought my sling, headed back to my room, dropped everything off, grabbed my copies of 'Once a Runner' and 'John Walker: Champion' and headed back.

When I got back it was just the girl sitting there, she saw me and gave me a "so you're back" and I said, in the most suave and debonair way I could manage at the time: "so I am." She headed off to the back to get him and left me starting at bridles and other horse stuff. She came back in a bit, and informed me that he was on the phone and would be up shortly, so look around and make myself at home. We talked then for a bit, but I don't remember much of what was said which is kinda aggravating cause she was quite hot I do remember telling her that I couldn't really believe that this was about to happen - quite the conversationalist. She did mention that he has Parkinson's and has lost most of the feeling in his face so he won't smile at all and if he seems really serious, that's why.

His wife came back in shortly with a younger girl (who I discovered later was his daughter) and joined our conversation. When I heard footsteps coming behind me I almost didn't want to turn around, I was so nervous. The first thing he said was a curt "John Walker" and held out his hand. I wish I could say that he had a nice firm handshake, but I honestly don't remember, I was so amazed that I was actually shaking John Walkers hand, I have no idea what else was going on. I know I introduced myself - I hope I didn't mumble to bad. For the next half hour the five of us just had a conversation like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

We talked a lot about training, what I was running, what I had run, times I ran, how old I was. The one thing he said was that for my age: if I were to run 70-80mi/week instead of 45-55, I would easily drop a minute and a half off of my 8k time of 26:12. He asked if I get injured much and since not, to definitely increase my mileage. I thought at first he meant that as long as one in not injured, one ought to increase ones mileage, which caused me some confusion as to how one knows at what mileage to stop at, but I think now that he meant me specifically, since I was not getting injured at the low mileage, increase my mileage up to 70-80, not indefinitely. He also said that speed will come with endurance, not the other way around, so I will get more speed just by virtue of the fact that the mileage is higher. While it is wise to run speed workouts, they should take a second priority to the miles, and especially do not over train them: going full pace or all-out on repeat drills will break the body down and not help. He said that his fastest 800 (1:44 - still the second fastest New Zealand 800, second to one that Snell ran) was run on a 110 mile week. He gave me the names of streets to train on, none of which i had heard of before and all of which were Maori names, so they all sounded the same, and I have no idea what they were. The one that I remember was that he said there was a running track about 2 miles down Broadway (I think) just straight down. I ran down there and couldn't find it though. Also he did a lot of training at one tree hill (down the same way) and on the waiatarua track to the west - somewhere I really need to try before I leave here. I mentioned that I try to run twice a day and his responce was that it's good, but make sure that I go at least 10mi in the morning and a 6k at night. I'm not sure if he meant both of them to be miles or both ks, or if he meant to mix the units, but that's what he said. That is a brief synopsis on the main points he said about training.

The discussion didn't end there however: I was grilled on my life - where I was from, how I ended up in New Zealand, how I liked it, what I liked most about it, what I was studying at uni, we even got into American politics: who I thought should be elected (not Clinton) he thinks that McCain will take the election, that America isn't ready for a black president, that Obama will probably be shot if elected, at which his daughter said: Daddy - you can't say that! (she was probably 11 or 12).

We talked for a good half an hour, starting with training, delving into everything else and then coming back to running by the end. As I was leaving he told me to come back whenever I want, and let him know how the training is going. I plan to run a 10k in June, so I think I will go before that, and maybe after wards too.

I shook every one's hands on the way out, and was then for the first time actually introduced to Katie, the hot chick, who I thought originally was one of his daughters, but I don't think so anymore. I was planning on asking him for a signature, but at one point Katie had a transaction form for him to sign, and the Parkinson's was fairly apparent - he signed with a large X, so I decided that it would be poor taste to ask for a signature - maybe I'll get a picture when I go back. Other reflections: Katie did say that this type of thing happens often.

It was quite an experience to meet him. I was shaking for the rest of the day, tried to climb and couldn't, couldn't do much in the way of work either. I'm finally typing this up on Sunday (I met him last Wednesday) and I am getting pretty shaky just remembering it all. I've been going around all week telling people that I just met john walker. I went to a comedy club on Friday night with Nicki and Ian Wallace and their family, I told Ian and he said that he used to run down by one tree hill at the same time that John did, that he would hear footfalls, so soft you could barely hear them coming behind and then John would just float by, they exchanged a 'hi John/hi Ian' and he would be gone. Ian said that watching him run was incredible, he did just float it seemed completely effortless. I wish I could have seen it.

Hell week and the Whanganui Canoe Trip

It started Tuesday morning, I had two essays due on Thursday at 4, one due Monday at 3 and a midterm Wednesday afternoon. Finished the first essay (on the nitrate uptake rates of seaweeds) on Tuesday night, after having started it Tuesday morning. Got up early on Wednesday to begin work on the second essay (on a marine survey of the goat island marine reserve) and took a short break from 4 to 7 to begin studying for the test, take the test and eat, before returning to the essay which was finally finished by 2 Thursday morning. Thursday I got up, began the essay due Monday, attended class, edited the two due later that day, turned them in and continued work on Mondays essay. At this point I had completed 2 and a half essays and one test in two days. Thursday night we left for the Whanganui river and a canoe trip that was to last until Sunday evening.

The canoe trip was amazing. It is the first of the great walks that I have done to date (I have been trying to stay off the beaten path in that regard) but it was well worth it. It was Natalie, Mike, Katie, and myself. Mike and Katie were two of Natalie's friends who turned out to be really cool. We got to the departure area late that night. It was just some one's back field that we were supposed to camp in, which seemed really sketchy but it was owned by the canoe hire place, Wades Landing, and in the morning we marshaled all of our stuff and were on our way. They provided watertight containers for our gear which was really nice. We got packed and piled into a van. The drive actually took a long time, we left at 8:30 and stopped for morning tea at around 10:00. After milling around and buying the hut passes for the trip (180$ for a canoe and a hut pass - I think we swindled them out of a hut pass apiece) we were issued our life jackets and we piled back into the van. From there is was only a couple minutes drive to the put in site and in due time we were given a canoe, some instructions, a paddle apiece and set on our way.

We opted to do the 3 day version of the trip instead of the full 5 day as we all had class to get to, it turned out that 3 was plenty for me. The first day had approximately 6 hours of paddling and it was going to be dark at around 6:30 so we were slightly pressed for time. We did well though. Natalie was quite an apt partner and we settled into a rhythm. The front person set up a consistent paddling stroke and the one in the back followed and steered. After two hours my shoulders were pretty sore and I got to take a turn in the back. Being in orchestra for so long, I quickly followed Natalie's strokes and it seemed to work out nicely. It was much more fun to be in the back steering than in the front just paddling, but it did get monotonous in either spot for too long, and we both preferred the back. I noticed that Natalie didn't match her strokes up with mine when she was in the back and I was in the front - and it really worked the same, somehow though I couldn't bring myself to not follow her when I was in back - apparently I'm OCD a bit. The scenery was pretty neat and being on the water was such a great experience. Its hard to describe an experience like that. Every two hours or so we switched positions and even with a relaxing lunch break, by dark we did arrive at the campsite. There was a hut there that we weren't planning on sleeping in, and we pitched our tent on a set of terraces cut into the side of the hill. The vegetation was so thick and the side hills so steep that there was no where else to pitch the tent except at the DOC campsite. The hut slept about 30 and it filled up rather quickly, the campsites filled up quickly as well. It was a national holiday, ANZAC day (like our memorial day) on Friday and the weekend we were there marked the final weekend of peak season (prices would have dropped quite a bit if we had put it off one week). There turned out to be around 80 people at the campsite that night, at least 50 of which were expecting to sleep in the hut. It was a mess, the poor hut warden didn't know what to do. We cooked and went down to the shore and hung out around a fire with some foreign students doing some exchange woofing program.

The next morning we were the last to leave and started out around 9 with five hours of paddling ahead of us. Slighlty sore from the day before, but well rested and well fed. The water was pretty flat for the first two days, only small riffles to go through and we made good time. Stopped for a nice long lunch on a sandbar and checked out some caves in the canyon walls. Saw a dead sheep caught on a stick in middle of the river. The campsite that night was less crowded and had more room. There was a marae there and more cooking facilities. Had another good dinner and hung out on the beach again. There was a possum hanging out in the tree by our tent when we got back, he was pretty small and quite fearless.

The next morning we started out. The pickup site was 4 hours of paddling down the river but this time there was some class 2 whitewater, which isn't all that big, unless you're in a canoe for the first time. The day went well, I got to steer down a little rapid and then we switched to let Natalie take the big one - which was a good thing because I would have swamped us. We were told at the begining to go way left unless we wanted to swim. Mike and Katie went first and they ended up swimming. We agreed that that was the last thing that we wanted to happen and that it was best to hit the rapid hard and see what would happen. We stayed slightly left, but got scuked into it, we were able to ride it out, to much applause from those on the bank who had flipped previously. We did however take on quite a bit of water and had to go bail for a bit. We were pretty excited that we made it through and the rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully. There were some other rapids but nothing quite as big as that one. Saw another dead sheep on a hillside. Made it to the pick up site shortly before we were due. The ride back took even longer than the ride to the drop off. We started at 3ish and got back to the car around 7. Stopped in town to buy some food and arrived in auckland fairly late. It was really disapointing to have to come back to civilization.

Started working again monday morning on the essay and was finished by the time it was due - I am pretty proud of my procrastinating skills on that one.

Proper Toilet Use

Seriously?

Door Still Fucked

In the student commons there is a double set of automatic sliding glass doors adjacent to each other. One of these doors apparently broke down the other day, I was eating lunch and noticed people try to go through it; it never opened and they ended up running into it, looking around sheepishly, and going to the other set. A couple days later a handwritten sign on a piece of notebook paper appeared, taped to the malfunctioning doors. It read: 'Door Still Fucked, Use That One' with an arrow pointing at the working door. I was surprised that a week later this sign was still posted, however within the next few days it was removed and a new one appeared, presumable placed there by the management as it was typed and quite formal looking. It read: 'We apologise for the inconvenience, but this door is still fucked, please use the other one. Thank you.'

5k

Low mileage this last week, cause of the Rarotonga trip - a taper I guess? The race went well, couldn't sleep real well the night before. Got up in the morning, ate, Kate showed up when she was supposed to, everything worked out pretty well. Realized that I have no warm ups, ended up with just normal clothes over the running stuff. We got to the race way early - there was hardly anyone there and the course wasn't even marked yet. People did show up, I went for a nice warm up jog around the course, it was really confusing, not well marked and really random trails and streets. I got it figured out by the time it started though. Saw some guys who looked like pretty hot shit warming up, got a little nervous. They all went off with the 10k though, the 5k started 10 minutes later and it was me and a bunch of old guys. There was one who could have been a real problem if the race had been 4.9k shorter, but it seems we went out too fast and he dropped off at the 50m mark. From that point on it was just me - turned into a tempo run. And then I caught up with the slow 10kers, and from about a k until the finish I was weaving around people. It was incredibly annoying. There were some narrow bridges that I actually had to stop and walk since I couldn't get around some fat lady with a stroller. It was intolerable. Ended with an ok time: 17:55. Leaned at the tape and beat out second place by a minute or so (18:40). Kinda disapointed, all the competition was in the 10k and I was in the 5. I thought that the first race I win would have been something a little more exciting than a glorified tempo run. It was Race 2 on the Results. Kate did well, she ended up getting turned around and running a 7k, and she still got 4th in her division - pacewise she almost would have won if she hadn't gotten turned around. There is another 10k coming up in 9 weeks so I'll have to do a little better in that one, it looks like there should be some good competition there too, and Alex might run with me.

Rarotonga

Quite the trip. Started at 6am on saturday morning with Gael waking me up. I was worried that I was the last one and they were all waiting for me. Turned out the I was the first and she was hoping that I would get everyone else up. Seth argued with me: "Hey -time to get up" "no it's not." TJ was asleep in his room, lights on and door to both the room and flat wide open. Sean was actually pretty excited cause he thought it was 4 not 6, once he figured it out he was fairly disappointed. Lee just went back to sleep, I had to go get him up again, Tex was furious and he chewed me out for a couple minutes before I could get out of there. Ten minutes later, Gael asked me to check on everyone again - just to be sure they hadn't fallen asleep. Lee was, Tex yelled again, but the others were pretty good. Ended up getting out of Parnell by 6:25 - only 25 minutes late. The same thing happened at each of the girls' residences. Got to the airport and were actually on time for the flight much to Gael’s surprise. Most of us slept the entire ride as no one actually got in the previous night before 2 - but that is a story in and of itself as the night after most peoples midterms usually will be. The island was pretty cool. I'm not going to go day-by-day since I really don't remember what happened each day, but here is what we did:

Lectures: some were better than others – the ones on Polynesian migration, local fishery ecology and some disease going around, even the one on the macroeconomics of the islands were pretty good, however the one on the genealogies of the chieftains of the clans of the islands got pretty long and boring. The last one was some old guy talking about his monopoly of the interisland trade business. I don’t know whether to classify that as boring or interesting -he was almost to quite to hear, but the stories he told were about stowing away and harboring goods illegally in different ports around the world. He led a pretty interesting life.

Cross Island walk: absolutely amazing, poured rain the whole time so we were soaked through. It was only about 2 miles but it was barley a track even, without a guide we would have been lost. On that note, our guide was amazing. His name was Pa, and he does the walk three times a week every week, and he’s only 68. His wife is a princess from Poland and he did the entire walk barefoot. He wore a pair of the good kind of short running shorts – I was about to ask where he got them. Took a couple hours to complete the trek. Forded some rivers and no one even tried to stay to the rocks cause we were all so wet at that point anyway.

Snorkeling: I didn’t take my contacts and I was furious at myself for the lack of foresight. Had to swim around with my glasses in my hand and hold them up in front of the mask to see anything. Needless to say I saw a lot of the really colourful things, and I’m pretty sure that most of the cryptic ones were easily able to avoid me. Still it was pretty sweet, saw a royal blue starfish and some giant clams which were really cool.

Dances: A number of times we got to go and watch the native dances of the islands. These were amazing – predominantly younger kids as most of the ones our age go to New Zealand to make money. They were really good though. The girls did the whole hula dance thing while the guys did this weird shake their knees in and out thing that was amazing to watch. Really enjoyed the dancing and the music. There was a competition at the end of the week, whole schools from around the islands got together and we got to watch, the whole population of the island was there in the ‘National Stadium’ which was not much bigger than the Palestra (for the UR readers) or the north gym at the high school (for the Bozeman ones). The whole thing was pretty cool.

Running: weekly mileage went from 65 to 75 to 35 once I got to the islands, way to hot and way to full of a schedule. Only ran once a day and it had to be in the morning since at night people let their dogs out. It only took one night run to convince me that the morning was the way to go. I am a dog person, but I hate it when they chase me. Also there was only 2 ways to run: clockwise or anti-clockwise. It got really repetitive.

Drinking: we drank lots, there were plenty of bars, and though they didn’t sell any alcohol on Sunday, I happened to find some germans on the beach who invited me to share a gin and tonic with them, it only took about 20 minutes and they got at least 6 shots worth into me. We stopped buy the airport shortly after that for some food (cause our hotel didn’t have any – they were closed on the Sunday). It was by far the best panini that I have ever eaten, no one else appreciated it quite as much as me though. The bars were pretty decent. Good dance parties with the islanders – quite the cultural experience there.

The Hotel: if anyone goes to the cook islands and is looking for somewhere to stay don’t stay at the Aquarius. Even though their major industry is tourism, these guys were not friendly at all. We came in late and fairly inebriated one night, and not wanting to wake the others in the hotel went out to the bar area. I was the first one out there and I was standing looking out the window waiting for the others and this security guy shows up and shines his light in my face and starts chewing me out. It lasted a good 10 minutes and the whole time I was just apologizing and trying to calm him down. Apparently they don’t lock the booze cabinet and so once the bar closes they don’t want people there; something I would never have even thought to try was checking to see if the beer was unsecured. All we wanted to do was sit and sober up for a while before bed. After a while Kate came in and started to fill up a pitcher, he started in on her then and kept going on her for another good 10 minutes about why, if they don’t want us in the bar, we can’t just get water and go to our rooms either (he kept saying that someone did clean the whole barroom for us that night and with us in it, it would get dirty before the morning, so we figured that going to our rooms was fine but definitely not so). He finally allowed us to sit down and left. He came back once to yell at us for being to loud – which we really weren’t very loud at all, it was mainly the noise of the chairs on the floor. That was it for the night, I retired and got up the next morning for a run. I was wearing my running shorts and shoes getting ready to head out and this guy comes up (this is at 8 in the morning – he and I were the only two awake) and tells me that we ARE in a hotel and I need to put a shirt on and be decent. I was thinking – wait a sec, we’re in the middle of the south pacific on a tropical island – why would anyone care if I wear a shirt or not? Especially this early in the morning. I just turned around and walked off, it wasn’t even worth my time I decided to listen to him. DON’T stay at the Aquarius.

Religion: We went to church on Sunday morning, because everyone does apparently – although the church was quite empty. The Service was interesting, but in Maori so we could not understand much of it. Pa kept saying on the hike that once the missionaries came in the 17^th century, the islanders accepted christianity in one hour. He said this a number of times, it was quite disturbing. The old religion is completely lost at this point, there used to be idols on the walk apparently at the very top, but they were all destroyed at the suggestion of the missionaries. It was a typical church service, came out with the realization that lots of people actually do believe this and the children have no opportunity to even hear another side to the story. Very disheartening. They did feed us afterwards though, which was quite nice – the fresh fruit was amazing. Also directly after the church service I found my fingernail clippers in my pants pocket I had been missing them for at least 3 weeks: I figure that god was just happy to have me stop by for a visit – or is that slightly cynical?

It was a cool trip, but the girls all had to room together so by the end of it they were all crazy. I was reading Baboon Metaphysics the whole time. I tea sreally interesting to hear about how the baboons interact in their social groups and then turn around and watch the IES guys and especially girls interacting in such close proximity, there were a suprising number of similarities. I'm getting pretty bionerdy now so I'll end with this: It was nice to get home.

BIOSCI 330: Freshwater and Estuarine Ecology: Field Trip

Saturday - headed to campus to learn about some inveterate identification. 10% of the grade was turning in 8 annotated drawings of different insects. A good lab - I really enjoyed drawing pictures, but by the 4th or 5th it all got pretty old. Still it was a pretty easy lab for that much of our grade.
Sunday - got up early and headed out to the Waiwera estuary to take some samples and determine any faunal trends that exist along the halocline up the estuary. Each group did two transects, our first was on the shore, found a couple of sand hopper isopod things and some beetles that looked like ladybugs except they were brownish white and black instead of red and black and they were buried about 20cm down in the sand. The second transect was quite a ways up the estuary and it was ridiculously muddy. It started only about ankle deep, but standing there sifting muddy clay and before long the mud was mid thigh deep. It has been ages since I've gotten to play in the mud like that - it was great fun. Found a bunch of crabs some shrimp and a bunch of oligocheate worms. For day trip it was pretty fun.

Fire, Ice and Computers

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Frost was clearly wrong on both accounts - the world ends when you spill water on your computer. Especially when it happens the week before everything is due and you didn't email any of the papers to yourself. On that note - I was pretty sure that the world ended last night, turns out it was just a slight pause, surprising how similar they feel sometimes. After a night of air-drying and a hair dryer (which was actually too hot and ended up melting my 'delete' key), I realised that the world was still in working order. The offending water bottle ended up across the room and most of its contents are currently discoloring my wall. It was a long night.

Climbing Orientation Trip - Froggart

Climbing trip to Froggart Edge. Amazing trip. Left Friday afternoon and drove with 3 other guys - everyone else at least got girls in their car, but whatever, had a nice talk about philosophy and religion. Got to the camp site before anyone else and were pretty worried that we took a wrong turn, but people showed up about half an hour later. Had one of the most awkward evenings of my life as no one knew each other and everyone was just trying to make conversation, but it was dark enough that no one could see who they were talking to anyway - I met most of the people in the next two days and I don't have the faintest idea of who I was talking with that night. ended up sleeping in the hammock under a awning for a BBQ. Next morning drove to Froggart edge and the committee members started setting routes. Took a while, but as they finished everyone started climbing. Good routes - very impressive, I ended up doing a couple top ropes early on to get warmed up then a couple leads, one of which was slightly above my level and was pretty freaky. The rock was called 'pocketed ignimbrite' and it was really shrarp, but had deep pockets all over the place. One route was called 'Bring your daughter to the slaughter' it was labeled as a signature route, quite an amazing climb, maybe 25 meters high, with a horrible little crimpy start, a nice ledge to get up on, followed by a face with nothing to hold onto, had to stand on tip toes on the edge of the ledge and reach up as far as possible to grab a little ledge and do a pull up over it, the rest of the route was pretty decent, except for the last move - some opposition and then a layback into a series of razor-edge two finger pockets. It was rough. At the end of the day they let me clean the anchors from some routes on lead which was really cool. Then we headed back to the campsite and prepared for a par-tay. Got a run in first with Till, about 7mi I think - he kept complaining about eating ice cream just prior to me making him run, but then kept dropping the pace down-we were going like 6:15 by the end of it. He kept pointing out landmarks: 'see this gate? it's only 10k more from this gate' and then 10 minutes later - 'Ahh, we're at the hill, it's only 15k more from this hill' - we only had about 45k left to go by the time we finished. Got back and stood in the lake for a while then ate sausages and got pissed for the rest of the night - I put up the hammock and we promptly blew out some of the stitches by putting 4 pissed people in it. Next morning went back to the edge, some more leads and then back home, with the same four guys I rode over with - although there was close to a 50/50 ratio on the trip.