This site, mgmaloney@wordpress, is a backup of my main site.  I created it when I was having troubles with my hosting company but now I’ve moved and the main, live site, is back up and running again.

Please go to:

blog.tigy.net

This site will not be updated regularly, but tigy.net will be!!

Love, peace & mung beans… Tigy

Race 4 of the Run Auckland series was on Sunday way out in Milford. I didn’t think I’d be able able to make it to this one, but after the boys weekend got canceled I thought I’d give it a crack.

I’m glad I did.  Was carrying a bit of an injury with sore calves from last weeks race, and had only managed a couple of runs during the week, but still managed a personal best time on what was a pretty tough course.

The ‘official’ distance of the run was 10km but I measured it more like 9.4km, which is actually quite a difference.  I think there may have been some last minute change to the course as we took a nice scenic detour at the turn around point.

I started the run a bit faster than normal, my plan was to get near to the front and try to stay with some of the better runners.  I ended up in a bit of a competition with a small group.  A couple of girls who would pull away on me on the hills but I would catch on the down side, and a couple of guys who stuck pretty close to me (or vice versa),  I think we kept pushing each other on.

I’d been reading a bit about the Lydiard method, keeping my effort level steady, not burning out on the hills, keeping my cardio under control and letting my muscles stay relaxed and do the work they’ve trained for.  Anyways what really blew me away was how by just sticking to the plan I was able to chase down all the guys who pulled away from me.  I just kept on “plodding” along and with about 200m to go I saw the last one of the guys I ran with at the start, a final push and I managed to pass he just before the line.

This was the first time I really applied any strategy to my running and to have it pay off was great.  I finished a shade under 43 minutes, which worked out to be about 4:30/km, which is about 0:20 faster than my best training runs.  Doesn’t sound like much, but I know how hard I worked to get from 5:20/km down to 5:00/km.  Still a long way off what the pro’s do, but a great achievement for little old me.

I think I’ll need a couple of days to recover, calves are telling me to rest.  Just 3 more weeks until the next big race though so can’t rest too long.

Xterra 2008 Race1 Team Tiger Yamasaki, Coyote Colquhoun, Panther Hamilton, Mountain Goat Maloney, Bobcat Boyce, Big & Little Horn Clark

Did my very first off road race in the weekend, a mild 16km jaunt out in the woodhill forest north of Auckland.

I’ve done a couple of 10k races on road, but never anything this long, or off road! I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It was tough, pretty much the first 30-40 minutes were uphill, with one real leg killer at the 7k mark. The rest of the team from work opted to downgrade to the short course, just 6.5k, but me being me wanted the challenge.

Gave my ankle a roll at the top of the big hill, but it came right after a few more km. It was awesome running through the bush on the flat and downhill, at least the bits that weren’t wet clay lined mud slides! There is nothing like being in a row of guys, running through the bush, all wordlessly pushing each other along… Highly recommend the experience!

Managed to knock off the course in 1:21:12, which for me was a great time. I have to admit that by the end I didn’t have much left in my legs and was pretty pleased to finish in one piece. Big ups to Macs’ who provided beers at the finish line, great idea!

Thinking if I can polish off 16km in that time I might be up to a half marathon before years end. We’ll have to wait and see on that though.

Next ones in a months time, can’t wait to see what the course is like!

On a final note I saw the most awesome mushrooms/toadstools in the forest. I mean these were exactly like the ones in the story books, you know the bright red with white spots. Had there been a few fireflys around I would have sworn there were fairies there too!

OK, so after more than one or two small "drops" out old faithful point and click camera is a bit unreliable. So with bubs arriving in a few days I could justify going out and buying a new one. A serious lack of cash meant I had to go real cheap, but as I want to get a proper camera again in a couple of years time anyway, I don’t mind.

Picked up a Canon A450 pretty el cheapo from tricky dickies. Bang for your bucks seemed pretty good, sure for under $200 you get sweet fa… but as I said 2 more years and I get a real camera again .

I took a few sample shots to see how it went, pretty happy with it for a point and click. For the hell of it I posted a few copies below.

The macro focus is impressive, and pretty quick (try getting a 4 year old to hold still for more than 1-2 seconds).		I just like this one, I know its just a mandarin but I like the way the colours came through.
Colours are pretty good and normal focus was very quick.		Handles mixed lighting pretty well too.
Super macro feature is great for close ups.		Again the focus is quick and the colours nice and vivid.
Was even able to capture a quick sad face from my girl who refused to pose for me.		Whiskey tells me the camera smells nice too.

I have to say although its just a point and click it takes pretty reasonable snaps. I haven’t tried it inside yet with the flash so that will probably be a weakness, but that’s not a killer.

I got a message out of the blue from a old friend the other day. Someone I hadn’t heard from in over 9 years. Someone from a stage in my life that I hadn’t realised until that moment was almost lost to me.

Its funny how time passes and life condenses, how the past not so much fades away as becomes transparent. How sometimes the lessons learnt and experiences had can become distant.

It got me thinking about me. It got me thinking about who I am. It got me thinking about all those people who made me who I am today. It got me thinking about whether I had become the person I wanted to be back then. It got me thinking about a lot of things.

Life’s a funny thing, its the greatest journey in the world. Its all about living, about experiencing and discovering. Its a journey that’s full of discoveries about the world around us, about the people we meet and about yourself.

It also got me thinking about whether or not anyone ever really gets to know themselves. I mean we spend a lot of time together, but do we take ourselves for granted? Perhaps we do, perhaps we should pay a bit more respect to ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong, life is good. Its got its up, its got some downs, but that’s what makes it special. That’s what makes us who we are, and we should all be happy about that. If you can look in the mirror each morning and see someone you like and respect then that cant be a bad thing, if your not happy with who you see then one of you has to change, just accept it, just do it.

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, I don’t know if I’ll actually post this, but you got me thinking, and when I think I like to write.

It was fantastic to hear from you, you reminded me of some great times and some great things and hopefully we’ll meet up again some time. KALO TAXIDI.

Yes I am still alive and still wanting to post. What with kids, new baby arriving, study, work and the fact I’m trying to get back into my running again I just haven’t had time.

Anyway, just to let you all know that I care about you here is my top 10 list of things I wish I had written about but just didn’t get time to:

1. Paul Potts – Quite wicked and I can see why he’s famous. He’s done a record that I wouldnt mind to hear but the clips they play on the radio make it sound a bit cheesy.
2. Police chases – Look I really, really feel for the family of the kid who died in a police chase the other day. But when are the press here in NZ going to stop blaming the cops for pursuing the guy and start blaming the idiots who run away from them. If we tell the cops to stop chasing what the hell would you do when they go to pull you over, run away because you know they cant chase you!
3. Awww damn it… only got to 3 and I gotta go again. I’ll be back soon… promise…

What does it take to get a 4 year old to stress out and loose it? One baby alive and 4 AA batteries.

Our little angel has earned herself a huge prize, something that turned out to be $100 worth of pure stress. We agreed on the prize early on and I tried to talk her out of it when I found out the actual cost, but gosh darn it, she was focussed on getting this damn doll.

What did she do? Without giving away all the gory details she finally started going wees on the toilet, something we have been working on for 2 years now, yes thats right 2 very long years…

In our excitement we promised her a baby alive, something she had been asking for, if she filled a "star chart" with 1 star being awarded for each tinkle. Lesson here is always check the price of something before you agree to it, never assume you know what it costs.

Well our little miss stubborn, who wouldn’t even enter the room containing the toilet a mere week before hand was up there peeing up to 6 times a day or more. When she got upset nothing would come out we told her she had to drink something first, so she would grab a glass, knock it back and run to the toilet and wait for something to happen. Explaining it too time for the body to process the drink meant she would sometimes go away only to check back on the toilet every 5 minutes to see if it was ready… God bless her she tried so hard.

So after 22 confirmed tinkles and one final attempt to talk her into something ‘better’ (i.e. cheaper) we bought her the baby alive.

What is it I hear you ask? Have you seen the Stephen King movie Carrie, and perhaps are also familiar with Chuckie? We’ll if you answered yes to both of those you have a vague idea. This thing is a little girl stress machine.

As I speak Beth is fast asleep, absolutely exhausted from the few hours of work of looking after the worlds most demanding baby!

Beth was so excited to get her baby alive, I doubt I’ve ever seen a more excited person when she came running into the house holding the box.

After showing me all the bits through the clear cellophane we began unwrapping, we got baby alive out first, baby immediately said she was hungry and daddy (me) hadn’t managed to untie the feeding spoon or bowl yet. This was not mummy or daddy’s baby, but Beth’s baby and she was very determined to do a good job of looking after her and making her happy. Daddy wasn’t getting the food out of the super twist tied in box and baby was hungry, this was a problem, a big angry you better hurry up or I will hurt you problem.

Anyways crisis adverted as I rip the feeding utensils from their package with bits of wire, cardboard and fragments of my skin flying everywhere.

Baby by now has moved past hunger and is now thirsty, but it’s OK as I have an unwrapping strategy, brute strength and knowledge that doctors can probably reattach just about any extremities which may be severed in the operation. But before I can get the bottle free baby isn’t thirsty anymore, she wants to play… ahh… the first couple of bars of twinkle twinkle little sta… oh oh that stops and she tells us she’s done a stinky, we have to change her nappy.

Now the cycle begins, feed me, I’m thirsty, lets play, I just shat my nappy, change me, feed me, Im thirsty… cycling through them at about  1 a minute, you get the picture of what it is like.

Apparently she also gets tired and goes to sleep, for about 1 minute!

Anyway we are coping with this, Fiona leaves the house, William goes to bed, Beth is trying to satisfy the eating, drinking machine and I go outside to resume my work on repairing our trailer.

About 5 minutes later I hear Beth talking loudly, then it sounds quite stroppy and demanding. She’s inside so I can’t hear the words but I assume she is just playing some game with baby.

Then she starts screaming, a real angry scream, not scared, but really, really, really angry.

I run to see what the problem is thinking William must have climbed out of his cot, managed to open the door, come into the lounge and pulled baby alive’s head off.

Beth meets me at the door holding baby and with a look in her eyes that would have sent Joseph Stalin running to find his mummy. "Daddy I was calling you, where were you!" she half spits, half shouts at me. Her eyes are afire with a passion that shouldn’t exist in someone that’s only existed for a few years.

"Baby needs her nappy changed, she told me, I am trying to change it and I cant, you need to help me" she spits at me again. "You need to help me, she needs her nappy changed NOW!"

I can see her slowly go from pure rage and anger to emotional overload and baby advises us that "oh, oh I did a stinky ".

That’s it for Beth, she so wants to do it right, to be the perfect mommy for her baby, she tried so hard to change the nappy but couldn’t. "You have to help me, I tried, I couldn’t find you, baby needs you."

Now the tears are rolling down her cheeks, her face is redder than a beetroot soaked in red die. I’m watching a complete mini melt down, she’s still full of rage, but that’s boiled over and now she’s snapped. She feels she’s failing her baby and she’s tried so hard, so, so hard and she can’t cope.

Baby alive thinks this is a good time to tell us we still haven’t changed her nappy "Change me" she says.

We’ve now completely lost it, tears running everywhere. She manages to get out between sobs, "I tried and I couldn’t, I called you and you didn’t come, you didn’t come, I needed you daddy, baby needed you."

Baby alive has driven her to a nervous breakdown in less than 15 minutes…

So we got it all under control, changed the nappy, told daddy off a few more times for not staying in touch and continued to change the nappy every 5 minutes for the next hour. My little girl wasn’t going to let that damn baby go for less than 1 second with a dirty nappy.

Yes I did turn it off, more than once, but Beth would keep checking on it, worrying why it wouldn’t wake up from its little "nap", so eventually I would have to turn it on. I tried to tell her we should ‘turn it off’ but in her mind that was akin to me telling a new mother we should just drown her baby… with a similar reaction…

We got baby alive down for the night, and Beth very soon afterwards, too tired to put up a fight, too tired for a story book, just wanted to go to sleep. Her only concern about going to bed was she was worried baby alive would wake up during the night and need feeding, and she was so tired she didn’t want to be woken up. "But I will daddy, I’ll get up and feed her if she cries cause she’s my baby", she told me. "I will, but I don’t want her to", she said.

Things may be better tomorrow, after the novelty wears off but Fiona and I are resigned to another week of today’s trauma, and also resigned that after a week of this we have about zero chance of now having any grandchildren…

Wahey! I ordered a brand spanking new computer today, finally replacing old faithful after about 5 years or so of loyal service.

Its a Dell E520 and is a big upgrade from what I currently have, very excited and really bummed that its going to take about 2 weeks for it to arrive. Oh well never mind.

Old faithful is going to the old folks home, that is mum & Chris’ place. I’ll give her an overhaul and then theyre all set and raring to go. If anyone wants an old, but good, monitor, keyboard and stuff let me know though as I’ve got some left over bits.

So this time things didnt go quite as planned. I’m bummed, pissed off, grumpy and sad. But I’ll get over it. I read something quite inspiring, and something I think sums up why we were finally able to win the cup in 1995

It is not a game for armchair admirals. It is not a game for a person who is not prepared to come back. It is not a game for the faint hearted. It is a game for those who are not scared of pitting themselves against the best that the world has to offer. It’s a game where winning is almost impossible, almost, but not impossible.

This time you didn’t win but certainly didn’t lose. You only lose when you don’t have the courage to return. Not winning is part of the learning process which leads you to success.

Sir Peter Blake… Letter to Luna Rosa after 2000 America’s Cup

You can read the full letter on Peter Lesters blog, something I’d recommend everyone do. Its a real insight into the mind of one of our greatest hero’s and something that can be applied to so much in life.

So we didn’t win this time. We were, without doubt, the best challenger. We had the best challenging boat and arguably the best challenging team. But those bastards over at ‘Adinghy’ were better. Their boat was probable an inch quicker overall and their teamwork was a little better on the day.

I dont blame the team, they gave it their all, they gave it 4 years of their lives. They’ll be feeling like crap and my heart goes out to them. I’m pissed off. I wish we had done better, and although I thought it was a waste of tax payers money at first, I want us to be back. Learn from this and give it another crack.

We didnt win, but we didnt lose.

No this time its not our little Willy I’m talking about (OK stop sniggering now, you know what I mean).

Corporal Willy Apiata of the NZSAS has just been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in Afganistan in 2004. Its the first time a kiwi soldire has received the award since WWII and I think a fantastic, long overdue, recognition of the work the guys in the SAS do. One of the problems with the SAS is that because they are secretive by nature you never hear about what they do, nor should you in a lot of cases. But I agree with Clark (Helen that it) that the awarding of a VC is a little bit exceptional. Even though Cpl Apiata’s name and photo have been widely published it didnt feel right for me to put his photo here, so I blanked out his face. If you want to see him I’ll let the worlds media take that responsibility. Personally as he is an active member of the NZSAS I think his face should be kept secret, but thats just my opinion.

Reports are that Willy carried a wounded mate 70 meters under heavy enemy fire, saving the mans life. There were 3 other awards made to other soldires for the same operation, but details of those are kept secret.

I notice that he started out in the territorials back in 1989, he’s from the Waikato and Eastern BOP so I wonder if he was with the 6 Hauraki? If he was he would have joined when dad was CO which is a nice little connection.

Kia kaha Cpl Apiata.