A great walk around the Kepler Track

I present to you....

My most recent tramping trip on the Kepler Track!

Day one: Walk to Luxmore Hut from the control gates.

Side trip to Luxmore Cave.

Each visitor needs two sources of light... head torches and iPhones don't exactly cut it!

Day two: BEAUTIFUL weather as we set off on the walk to Iris Burn hut.

On top of the world...can you spot the trampers?

Hello, Lake Te Anau!  View from Mt Luxmore.

The road ahead....

Glorious, glorious mountains.

I love feeling so small when tramping... 

The world is big and beautiful and I'm lucky to see these little corners of it.

Lakes + mountains = awesomeness, like whoa

Once upon a time, I sat with my dad on the top of a mountain in the Adirondacks crying because being up so high scared me.   Imagine all that I would have missed out on if he didn't teach me how to harden up?! Thank you, Dad! I've been hiking around New Zealand's south island for nearly two years and I always wish that he could be here to experience this with me. 

A friend yells, "Come on in, the water's fine!"

Hands down my favorite part of the track.

FIRST KEA SIGHTING!

It looks cute, but it is capable of stealing and/or destroying belongings!

Yes, this is part of the same track!

The sandflies were a little outrageous at Iris Burn hut, so no pictures of the hut... just the valley it sits in.

Passed Moturau hut on day three as we walked from Irish Burn back to the car (30k).  

It's got one helluva view of the lake!  

Kepler was a GREAT track to walk on, but Routeburn is still my fav.  I'll get a chance to tramp up on the north island next week. Yahoooooo!

Kepler Track Part I: Dropping my camera in a bottomless pit of poo

If you were anywhere in Te Anau this past weekend, you probably heard a very loud Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!! being screamed from a long drop on the Kepler Track.  

A friend from the States was visiting New Zealand and we reunited to hike across one of New Zealand's Great Walks.  Mirjam and I met a few years ago through triathlon and crossed the finish line at the same Ironman Lake Placid race.  Clearly, we are two tough chicks and, clearly, we can take on anything. Right?

Our party of four began its first day of a three-day tramping trip.  After a short walk through the bush it was time to take a break, so we stopped at the first shelter for a snack and to use the "bathroom".   But, the sandflies in the toilet were so bad that other people refused to use it.  Wimps.  I wasn't about to let a few tiny bloodsucking insects stop me from doing my business.

So, I walked over to the long drop and opened the door, saw the the flies, and took a step in.  

Now, there wouldn't be a story if I had taken a moment to check my pockets before I walked in.  See, for some reason I thought it was a great idea to put my camera and a muesli bar in the front pocket of my jacket and not pull up the zipper.  But, since checking my pockets isn't part of my usual bathroom protocol I didn't think anything of it.

As I leaned over to inspect the condition of the toilet seat (hey, I have no problem sharing tight quarters with sandflies, but I refused to put my butt on a wet toilet seat) both items on my pocket slid out and bounced off the toilet seat.  One item landed on the floor and the other landed in a pit of poo. 

WHY DIDN'T THE MUESLI BAR LAND IN THE POO?!!!

After I screamed, I tried to think quickly and rationally about the situation.  That's when I emerged from the loo, grabbed the closest long stick and returned to the scene without a word to three other people standing there in utter confusion. 

I shoved a stick roughly the size of the length of my arm into the brown muck and fished around for my camera.  I wasn't too sure how I'd get my camera out with the stick and I wasn't sure what I would do after I got the camera out with the stick...maybe get it to the lake, drop it in the water and rinse it off??  

Truth be told, I was kind of relieved that I couldn't find the camera (the stick didn't reach the bottom of the pit, boy it's deep!); and, I was kind of relieved that the camera didn't float because, in all honesty, it was probably going to require help getting it out and there wasn't much space for two adults to fit in there with at least four arm's length sticks.

I emailed the Department of Conservation in Te Anau when I got back to civilization to let them know what happened (I worried that rubbish would clog something up, mess with bacteria breaking the "matter" down, etc).

Sara: 

Hi, I just wanted to let someone know that I dropped my camera in the toilet at Brod Bay this past weekend... I tried to fish it out with a stick, but... I couldn't find it. 

DOC: 

Hello, thank you for your email. I am very sorry that happened! Thank you for letting us know. The toilets usually only get emptied once a season so I fear your camera may be lost. 

I made sure to reply that I did not want it back!  

Thankfully, I had a backup camera.  I'll post pictures from the other camera later soon!  

The Americans are coming!

I'm just a couple months shy of celebrating two years of living in New Zealand! Time has flown by and there's a lot of work left to do for my PhD.  Lately, I've been prepping to run focus groups with Maori and Pacific Island women, writing a bit here and there in my thesis chapters and gearing up for our website development so that I can run a feasibility study later in 2014.  On the side, I'm revising a manuscript that didn't hack it for a public health journal and working as a research assistant on two projects (measuring length/weight for babies in our Baby Lead Introduction to Solids Study and getting survey materials mailed out for a study on economic shock and resiliency of small New Zealand towns).

It's beautiful days like the one that we had today that make it soooo hard to stay inside and do all the work, though.  I'm hopeful that the weather continues to stay this nice as I'm having my first visitor from the U.S. coming for a visit!!  We'll be tramping on the Kepler track and I could just burst from excitement!

Since it's just about summer time in Dunedin, I'm also hoping for more frequent tramping adventures, which means I'll update the blog a little more regularly.  I'm pretty sure folks would find that more interesting than reading about my recent experience running focus groups with mid-age New Zealand women to get their opinions on our intervention or my days spent stuffing hundreds of survey packets to mail to residents of some small towns in New Zealand. =)

October weekend wanderings

This past week, I had a meeting with a primary investigator on a study that I'm helping with.  I said, "You know, it's not that I don't want to do everything that I'm trying to do; It's just that there aren't enough hours in the day!"  She could relate.  

In October, I had days where I was in one office at 9am to get work done for a study and then I'd walk over to my office for the rest of the day and into the night....and into the early hours of the morning.  My crazy long days were mostly the result of running focus groups - they are so time consuming!  

On Thursday, for example, our focus group ended just before 7pm. Then, Olivia and I went up to my office to make revisions to the module to present in Friday's focus group.  Then, I transcribed the discussion from the focus group.  By the time I finished up a few more things it was nearly 3am.  As I walked to my flat I wasn't alone - plenty of students were stumbling home after a night at the bars.  I was stumbling along with them, but that was from the sleep deprivation.  

I thought I was really overtired when I saw a 6-food tall white rabbit walk across the corner of Great King Street and St. David... head hung low, floppy ears dangling to the side... such a strange sight!  But, it was Halloween and there were others dressed up in costumes, but that rabbit was the most surreal. Ha!

Yet, October wasn't all work and no play.  Recently, friends and I took a hike up the Pineapple Track to Flagstaff.

Otago Peninsula, Otago Harbour and the city of Dunedin below.  I've been living in Dunedin for a year and eight months already - just another year and four months to go!

Last weekend, Will and I took a hike to Jubilee Hut in the Silverpeaks.  The original plan was to hike the Gillespie Pass Circuit, but the forecast called for snow and I didn't have enough time to organize  gear.  The Department of Conservation gave Will a few suggestions, but we'd have to drive up to 4 hours away and so it made more sense to stay local.

Not a bad day for a hike, eh?

At the 10-bunk hut there were already about 30 people and we knew more were on the way because we passed them on the way in.  So, we hiked back out (just under 20k, 12 miles, round trip).

I wasn't complaining - the views were pretty awesome!

This past Monday was a holiday and so for Labour Day we took a stroll to Purakanui beach.

 

This is a beach that I hadn't been to before.  It was great to be in a spot that wasn't busy with lots of people.

Further down the beach we found a spiffy tunnel to explore!

Photo credit: Will Styles

November will be busy, but the weather is getting nice and so I'll have to work hard during the week to keep those weekends freed up for tramping... it'll be good training for my 50k race coming up in March.

Focused on Weight Gain Prevention

Let me take a moment to stop, take a deep breath, and thank heavens that October is over!  My life has been crazed, but in a good way.

I've spent long hours developing content for a weight gain prevention program (using work by Evan Forman,  Jennifer Taitz, Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel, Rick Kausman, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch for inspiration) and testing it in focus groups (17 focus groups x 1-2 hours each!).  On top of thesis work I've been juggling my research assistant duties for three (!) separate projects - Motivational Interviewing and Treatment (MInT), Baby-Lead Introduction to Solids Study (BLISS), and a qualitative study of community capacity in Mataura, New Zealand.  Phwew!

The chaos was kicked off after a local paper ran this little article to help us recruit women for focus groups:

The Star, October 2013

To participate in focus groups, women had to be between the ages of 40-50 (inclusive), have issues with non-hungry/emotional eating (we used Tracy Tylka's  Intuitive Eating Scale - 2013 version), and have a BMI greater than 27.

Our goal was to have feedback from eight women for each of the 11 modules.  I had no problem filling in our focus group schedule (basically, Monday-Friday at 5pm).  Nearly 40 women contacted me to participate in focus groups - one woman said that she was almost in tears because she was so happy that someone was addressing the emotional side of eating behavior!

Overall, they really enjoyed the content that we presented - just minor tweaks here and there when I wasn't "kiwi enough" with my descriptions and instructions (meaning, I needed to use gentler/friendlier language).  At first, women were caught off guard by our mindfulness exercises, but we all worked together to get the language in guided activities acceptable by the majority of participants.

Intervention teaser: mindfully eating a raisin (an adapted Jon Kabat Zinn activity) was an absolute hit as was letting negative thoughts float away on leaves on a stream (an adapted Russ Harris activity)!

I still need to test our paper-based mockups of the website with Māori and Pacific Islander women and then I'll send our materials off to three experts for review (one is an expert in women's health and has a background in Māori health, another researches intuitive eating and the other applies Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to weight loss interventions).  Once that's all done I will send the content to a web developer to get everything on a prototype that I can test in December/January.  A beta version of the website will hopefully be up about five months post-prototype and then I'll have a website to test in a feasibility study (late 2014).  I'm sooooo excited that this is coming together!

McLean Falls

Last Saturday, Will and I took the scenic route to Invercargill.  I had my hopes set on seeing the Cathedral Caves, but the access road is closed until November. Grrr.  So, instead we stopped at Kaka Point and McLean Falls.

It was a lovely day to be out and wandering around.

When is the last time that you saw a sign with a picture of a smiling skull warning you of danger?  (Possums are a terrible nuisance in New Zealand, by the way.)

The ~15 minute walk to McLean Falls was pleasant (with the exception of a few sandflies).  I would put this detour on my top picks for things to do/places to see in this part of New Zealand!

The weather turned as we headed back to the carpark and so we weren't able to stop for more sightseeing.  But, on Sunday we got out and took a small trip to Riverton... home of the Southland Marathon starting line.  I was quite happy just strolling around the beach out there and admiring the sky.

This weekend I'm returning to the Pineapple Track for a mini hike in preparation for my first totally-planned-all-by-myself tramping trip next week!!  It'll be Labour Day weekend in New Zealand and I decided I'd spend it on a challenging yet rewarding 58k (36 miles) circuit that may include a jet boat trip to the track access.  Cool, huh?! I'm STOKED!

Blood Money

Last weekend was the most miserable I've been since I moved to New Zealand.  To earn some extra cash I joined a study that is looking at the bioavailability of a medication.  Unfortunately, I am a needle-phobe and the study required 18 blood samples per weekend (plus extra trips to the clinic for lab work during the week).  It wasn't exactly the ideal way to make a quick buck, but there aren't many options for making money around here.

See, this past July I struggled to make my student loan and income from the research assistant gig stretch.  It was pretty stressful and a smidge embarrassing to have money worries as bad as they were.  So, this semester I've been hellbent on making sure I make the student loan stretch farther without sacrificing what I really love to do - tramping.  I find that a weekend hike is the best bang-for-your-buck around since it combines sightseeing, mental therapy and physical activity on a really affordable budget (~$50 covers petrol and food costs which are the big expenses since I have a Department of Conservation hut pass).  I can't give that up.

I asked around for ways of bringing in income which didn't involve high heels and a stripper pole (I'm not very coordinated and I am accident prone).  Someone mentioned a local company that recruits volunteers for drug trials and so I looked into it.  I figured a couple hundred dollars in exchange for giving up two weekends was as good of a deal as I'd get - that is, if I could handle a cannula in my forearm for two 24-hour periods and "bleeds"starting at 15 minute intervals.

From 8pm Friday through 8am Sunday this is where I spent most of my time:

The first weekend I was a mental milkshake.  The stress of the discomfort from the needle in my arm and the soreness that accompanied 18 blood draws had me on edge...

All the vials to fill over 24 hours:

I went through waves of nausea after each blood sample was taken.  Then I'd think how unfair it is...  I helped someone through graduate school (he had student loans, but we also had my income and it was more than just the money - he had me there to support him, talk to him about tough days, celebrate the accomplishments), but now I'm having to do it on my own... Thinking that I'm selling myself to research because I need money that bad.  That's when the water works would start.  I'd try not to get too worked up because crying would trigger a mild headache.

Just before midnight on the first Saturday, I was fighting the urge to go home - surely it wasn't a good idea for me to continue if I was getting so upset?!  Yeah, I was a little dramatic that weekend.

To keep me from quitting the study, I'd just think about the money and how good it'd feel to see my bank account statement after I was paid.  It was really difficult to believe it would be worth it, but somehow I managed to stick it out.

Thankfully, I have the memory of a goldfish - by Thursday I had forgotten how traumatic I thought my previous weekend had been and how sore my arm was on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  I walked into the clinic this past Friday night feeling ready for the weekend ahead.

The cannula made my arm pretty sore since it was in the same spot as last time, but I managed to stay much calmer this time around.

In fact, I only cried 3 times instead of the previous weekend's grand total of 18 times! (I honestly wasn't the only one complaining about a sore arm this weekend, but I just happened to be the only one who cried over it).

The experience got me thinking about taking a look at available scholarships (free money would be sooo much nicer!), but I'm pretty limited to what I can apply for since I'm not a New Zealand resident.  Thus, I have a feeling that I'll be doing another study like this in the future.

Unless I win the lottery.

Dead Cow in the Road

This weekend's tramping trip brought me to Mavora Lakes Park and Snowdon Forest.  I can't say whether I enjoyed the scenery or the company more!  Two spunky Portuguese ladies and a happy Italian chick certainly made for a fun time.  I even learned a new phrase - la fantastico zucca zanzara! (Yes, the fantastic pumpkin mosquito).

Day 1 - 10k walk to Careys Hut on a cheesy easy four wheel drive track that hugged the North Mavora Lake...

...and was partially blocked by a dead cow.  Gross.

At the hut we were greeted (?) by at least eight adults and two kids (it's a 4-person hut).  Let's just say it made for a restless night's sleep between the person with sleep apnea (ohmygod it's scary to hear someone stop breathing, make a few gagging sounds, and then bust out some loud snoring) and the child who decided to start whimpering in the middle of the night because... it was dark.  Hmm....  At least the views outside were lovely!

Day 2 - 10k walk back to North Mavora Lake car park...

Then a quick drive over to the Kiwi Burn swing bridge to cross the Mararoa River.  Kiwi Burn Hut is located on a "simple" 3 hour loop.  I use quotes because it was a well marked track and there wasn't much elevation gain, but it got tricky when we were about 300 yards from the hut - oohhhhhh! It was so close, yet so far!  The ground was saturated and at points my leg sunk into the depths below up to my knee.  I lovingly refer to this area as The Deceptive Field of Hope (or something like that).  

Once inside the 12-person hut we were happy to find that we didn't have to share with anyone!  I celebrated by cracking into my new FAVORITE tramping treat - Lindt's blueberry intense chocolate. Delish!

Now, being a Heinz 57 American, I opted to have no part in meal preparations (honestly, my mangled heritage is utterly useless for instinctively cooking anything that is not supposed to be bland, super fatty, super salty or super sugary - I just cannot compete with ladies from Portugal and Italy!), so I was responsible for keeping the hut warm.  We were all quite pleased with my fire building and we stayed toasty all night long.  

Day 3 - Easy as pie 1 1/2 hour walk from the hut to the car through beautiful mossy forest.  So pretty!

It'll be interesting to see what happens to this area in the future.  There are plans to build a monorail to create some sort of fancy schmancy experience to get tourists from Queenstown to Te Anau.  A Kiwiburn terminus would be built right in the area that I was tramping this weekend.  Frankly, the idea seems like crap to me... the group that we shared Careys Hut with all came in on 4 wheel drive vehicles.  Just their four vehicles were enough to turn me off to the idea of having more noisy vehicles in the area (part of the plan for that project mentioned above involves 4-wheel-driving through the area).  It really killed the experience of enjoying nature in a peaceful way when the group zoomed by us on our way to AND from the hut...and we were left to inhale exhaust fumes after the cars were long gone. Ick.

Anywho, plans are in the works for my next tramping trip.  Now that spring is here I imagine I'll be out and about quite a bit in the great backcountry of New Zealand!

Things A-Brewin'!

Last weekend I went to Dunedin's first Craft Beer and Food Festival.  It was a hit!  It was SO awesome to have breweries from around the south island in one spot to sample deliciousness after deliciousness.

Emerson's made a special festival brew with Whittakers chocolate - this stout was so yum!  It had just the right amount of chocolate in it (I love the taste of stout, so too much chocolate would have made me sad).  My favorite beers came from Velvet Worm.  Hands down.  They totally rocked my taste buds.  I've had cravings for their Periportous Pale Ale ever since I left the festival!  The Eve of Jupiter Red Ale was also pretty darn tasty.  The word on the street is that Velvet Worm is served up at local restaurants and thus I am on a mission to suss out exactly where I can get more (Dunedin Malt House looks like a promising spot to get my fix if I'm not looking for nibbles to go with my pint).  Golden Eagle Brewery's Big Yank American IPA really impressed me - I may have been nostalgic and felt like I was right back in the States when I sipped it (overstatement? Maybe. But give 'em a try if you can get your hands on this stuff!).  The last beer stop of the day was at Twisted Hop.  They had a heated mulled cherry beer that was sooooo delightful in that c-c-c-c-cold stadium.  The day finished up with music by Sola Rosa - man, were they FUN!

Now that I've tasted everyone else's beers, I probably should get around to brewing my own.  iMake donated Mangrove Jack's Series brew kits to the Otago University Brewers Association and so all OUBA members will have a crack with them.  Funsies!  But, before I do that I need to bottle the plum wine that I started back in March.  The color looks good and it doesn't smell funky, so I think it's ready to be consumed in the near future. Hurray!

Great Naseby Water Race

What a weekend in Naseby!  The weather was stunning for the Great Naseby Water Race - my first glimpse of ultra running.

I traveled out of town on Friday with friends - one of which was signed up for the 80k (49.7 miles) race.  When we reached Naseby, we stopped by the start/finish line to watch some of the 100 mile runners (oh.my.god. why would someone want to run that far?!).  It was hard to believe that we'd return in the morning and they'd still be running.

Runners of all distances ran the same 10k (6.2 mile) figure 8 shaped course.  This was fantastic because the start/finish line was located where the two loops intersected-spectators could see their athlete every 5k and athletes had access to their own nutrition and gear every 5k.

On Saturday we were up around 5:30am to take our runner to the start line.  I had never been to a race that started in the dark!  It was actually really neat seeing athletes and spectators donning headlamps to make their way to the start line.

The sky was amazingly clear - the stars were incredibly bright and the crescent moon was sitting pretty just above the tree line.  But, my enjoyment of the moment was short lived - holy hell it was freezing out there!  I was thankful that I wasn't running; to think... those 100 mile runners had been in that cold all night!

During the day, the air temperature was great for a race - I was able to stand in a t-shirt and shorts without getting chilled.  The sun was out the whole day and so the snowy mountains really stood out against the clear blue sky.

Our runner did his first 40 kilometers by himself and then his brother and I took turns running with him.  The original plan was to alternate pacers every 10k for a total of 20k each, but I ended up running 25k because the other pacer wasn't feeling well.  I hadn't run that far since the Christchurch marathon, but I made it through with few issues-the course was forgiving because it was on trails for long stretches and our runner alternated running and walking, which helped my knees cope with the distance.

The experience of watching the ultra reminded me of my experience with Ironman Lake Placid - enduring a lot of pain and digging deep for patience/strength to make it to the finish line.  Oddly enough, it got me excited to take a shot at an ultra marathon next year!  I've started training for the Northburn 50k race and so I have my fingers and toes crossed that I can make it to March with no injuries.

Back at it, like whoa

It's SUCH a great feeling to be back in Dunedin!  I've been extremely busy with thesis work, MInT study stuff, and finding a gig (or two) to bring in $$$ after the MInT study wraps up.  On top of that I've started getting back into running after a two month hiatus (injuries/illness kept me down, but I'm back!).

The MInT study has been following families for two years to compare two groups: families that did/did not work with a mentor to make healthy changes.  I've been responsible for booking measurement appointments and doing the measuring for height, weight, waist circumference and blood pressure.  We've got about three children left to measure and then the analysis will begin... All children were overweight (based on BMI) at the start of the study and now we'll see what happened to children's body composition and look to see if the type of intervention group may have influenced outcomes.

I've also been through a little bit of training to measure babies' length and weight for the BLISS study-this study will look at baby-lead eating practices.   I also got a job with a qualitative study where I'll be responsible for going door-to-door to interview people on quality of life related issues.

My own research has taken off recently.  I received a lot of good feedback after my presentation on psychological flexibility and women's weight changes at the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science conference in Sydney - it makes me super excited to continue my research knowing that so many people find it interesting in these early stages!

Related to that - I've almost wrapped up the entire analysis for these two questions:

• Does baseline psychological flexibility predict 3-year weight change/stability?
• Does baseline intuitive eating predict 3-year weight change/stability? 

I'll still need to analyze our data to look at baseline mindfulness and weight change/stability, but now that I understand our statistics software and how to run analyses, check diagnostics, blah, blah, blah, the process should go quickly.  All of this data analysis has also got our team thinking about what to ask with the 5-year Women's Lifestyle, Eating Habits and Wellbeing survey, which will take place in 2014.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to explain a little more about my own research findings and share pictures of recent adventures around New Zealand.  In fact, on Monday I should have pictures from my first experience as a spectator at an ultramarathon! WAHOO!

Ironman Lake Placid 2013

I went up to Lake Placid to catch the Ironman triathlon and volunteer with friends from the Broome County Triathlon Club on the bike course.

At the bike aid station we were responsible for handing off water, Powerade, gels, bars and bananas to athletes as they zipped by us.

Caps had to come off all these bottles!

A kiddie pool of ice kept the drinks chilled.

Prepping the Powerade:

 The group waits for athletes:

After the shift, I went into town to look for BC Tri Club members who were out on the race course.  I saw this spectator rocking a fancy orange/pink ensemble: 

Watching the Ironman finishers reminded me that all the effort and pain of training and racing is so worth that feeling of accomplishment at the finish line.

I can already sense that I'm running out of time in New Zealand and so I'm not sure how feasible Ironman New Zealand would be - financially and time-wise.  I brought my road bike back to New Zealand with me, but I think I'll use it for cross training because I've decided to do a little 50k race that will take place in March.  =)