Albatross and Harbour Cruise

So, back to my birthday...

I mentioned that my birthday took a few days to celebrate.  Well, the weekend after my birthday started off with a trip to Mt. Cargill to catch a beautiful sunrise with Jen, Alex and Will.

Next, Will and I set off to the peninsula to visit the Royal Albatross Centre.  It was a pretty neat place to tour.  Below, you'll see a picture of an albatross chick.  Can you believe that these guys have to lose weight before they learn to fly?!

There are other interesting facts about these albatross...for example, they'll circumnavigate the globe and then come back to this spot in 5-6 years to reproduce.  

Also, the adults are huge!  Well, actually, their wing span is quite impressive-roughly 9ft!  Here's a video of some adults flying above the chick:

Included in the tour was a visit of Fort Taiaroa which was built to defend against the Russians.  Hmm, it's such a long flight to New Zealand, I can't imagine Russians wanting to sail all the way there!

The BIG surprise of the day was a cruise on the harbor.  It complemented the tour of the albatross colony so well!

I thought it was pretty neat to see the colony from the water:

(If you squint you can see white dots - those are the albatross chicks in the middle and just a little to the left)

Behind the boat was a pretty nice view, too!

Who would have thought we'd end the tour with a kiwi pirate ship spotting?!

Ah, I just love being out on the peninsula and out on the water - the colony tour and harbor cruise were fantastic surprises for my birthday!

I highly recommend that visitors combine the two in one trip, but keep an eye out for deals on GrabOne or the local Entertainment book to make it more affordable.  

First Marathon in New Zealand

Clearly, I'm having an "omg,Ihaven'tupdatedinages" moment.  When I was looking at my photos of the albatross colony, I realized that I didn't post anything about my marathon!  

The Christchurch Airport Marathon was my first marathon in New Zealand (other marathons include: Philadelphia, Wineglass, and the run leg of Ironman Lake Placid).

On our way to the start:

And the finish...

I pulled off a 4:08 with minimal training, so I'm confident that I can go sub 4 hours if I'm not injured or sick.  However, it has been about 5 weeks since the race and I'm still dealing with a sprained foot.  There's another marathon in September that I hoped to train for, but I'm not confident that I can build up my training volume in time.  I have a feeling that I'll look into an ultra marathon later in the year instead.

New Yorker in New York.... soon!!

Man, oh, man. I have been extremely busy getting ready for the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science WorldCon in Sydney.  I am the recipient of a scholarship to attend the conference - thank you to the Australia and New Zealand Chapter of the ACBS!

Who would have thought a 15 minute oral presentation would require so much work?!  I spent a lot of time nailing down the analysis of our baseline and 3-year follow-up survey data to look at the association between psychological (in)flexibility and body mass index changes/stability.  Then I had to type it up into a PowerPoint presentation.  It took a lot of work to polish it off, but thankfully my supervisors were amazingly supportive and I got it done.

So, before I write about my experience at the conference, I'll catch you up on the past few weeks.

First off, I turned 30.

I went to Signal Hill to catch the sunset on my last day of my 20s.

On my birthday, I set off early in the morning to catch the sunrise from the top of the Pineapple Track, but, uh, in good old Sara fashion I had a few detours and didn't quite make it to my destination.  But, I still caught the sunrise (just to the left of Mt. Cargill).

My friends joined me for a trip to see the butterflies at the Otago Museum to celebrate my big milestone.

Nicole and Jen were the hugest sweethearts ever and made butterfly cupcakes for the occasion!

The birthday shenanigans continued, but I'll write more about them in the next post...