Keegan Williams's Blog

Well, I have shifted house for about the 3rd time since I have been home from Europe!  But we are now settled in a place called Cambridge, which motto is “Home of Champions” but I will save that for another blog.

This place has got one of my favourite long runs, a hilly loop of about 35k which takes in Sanatorium Hill and French Pass Road. Its been a proven stomping ground of one of New Zealand’s great past runners Dick Quax. Apparently he has done a few laps around the circuit in his time. Dick was the world record holder for 5k in the 70′s and set a debut marathon time of 2hr11min in the USA, he was coached by John Davies, another champion runner out of ther Lydiard stable.

So I am looking forward to making this my weekly long run…. check out the map link below

http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/new-zealand/cambridge/292381

Well I out riding the other morning, minding my own business, enjoying the crisp morning air. Then boom, whack I get a big smack in the back of the helmet. Well I was pretty sure Osama or the North Korean’s hadn’t arrived so what was it?
Well, it was a cheeky little Magpie, obviously protecting it nest. It must of stunned it self as it only bombed me once.
On the way home I was ready, and sure enough, into the target zone and it bombs me at least 5 times, this time I was ready though, waving my fists and yelling at it
Not that it helped much, next time ill take the shotgun…..

Well, there’s not much triathlon news today from NZ, but there has been abit of racing across the tasman with the horses. Tracy has been a bad influence lately, I went to the Trotting track to watch a meet on Thur night and have just watched the Caulfield Cup on TV in aussie.
A horse called Viewed won the Cup, and the trainer is a man called Bart Cumming. He’s obviously got a good system as he has won about a zillion races in the last 50yrs, including 12 Melbourne Cups!
And what did I learn from the horses? Get in a good position early on and horse racing pays more than triathlon!
2.5million prize pool for the Caulfield Cup

Well I have a big weekend this weekend, not only is Hawaii on this weekend, the All Whites are 180min away from the Soccer World Cups Finals, to be held in Zafa land in 2010. We have a home and away playoff with Bahrain who is ranked about 30 places above us. The last time NZ qualified for the world cup was 1982, it was a magnificent victory just to get to the finals in 82, and the playoff process was a tense affair with NZ having to beat Saudi by 6 goals or more to get through on goal differential with China after 2 qualifying rounds. We ended up beating Saudi 5 nil so drew with China on goal differential.So with NZ and China equal on goals  it was off to neutral Singapore for a sudden death playoff for the last of 24 spots, the Kiwis showed there bottle and beat China with the high humidity and pro Chinese crowd of 60,000 all against them

I know all my team mates will give it there best shot in Hawaii as will the All Whites on Sunday night. Rip it up………

World Cup Team 1982

This past week I was lucky to be able to go to a wedding in Fiji, thankfully the Tsunami left Fiji unaffected. Tracy’s brother Ross was getting married to a young lass from Australia.

The weather was similar to Subic bay and brought back some good memories of heat campJ. We stayed at a place called Plantation Island, which is Island located off Fiji’s mainland, has a perimeter of 7k. The island consists of  two resorts, small marina and airfield. No pool swimming for me, all in the sea. The island is surrounded with coral reefs so there was an abundance of fish life and coral to check out while swimming, no wetsuit needed either, the water must have been at least 23-25degrees.