Nick Willis wins in New York

Nick Willis has again shown his class this week by taking out the Fifth Avenue Mile in New York the week. It caps off a great season for Willis who took the Bronze medal at Beijing last month.

Click here for an interview with Nick where he sheds some light on his recent success and future aspirations. Thanks to Peter Gambaccini of Runnersworld.com for the interview.

As for my training , I don't want to say too much right now other than that I have started to take some slow baby steps. I'm not going to talk (blog) too much about my running until I'm happy that I have something positive to report.

Keep running.

Photo credit - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparcnz/

New Zealand Mourns World Cup Defeat

New Zealand is mourning today after the shock defeat by France in the quarter final of the Rugby World Cup, in Cardiff this morning.

Heavily favoured going into the game the New Zealanders again failed to produce thier 'A game' when it mattered the most. They were out passioned by the spirited French side and despite having a huge possesion and territory advantage, they could not turn that advantage into points.

There will be those that lay the blame with the inexperienced English referee, who made it must be said made some 'interesting' decisions and seemed very lenient on the French around the rucks and mauls. The All Blacks simply did not dominant the game sufficiently to put it out of reach of the French, something they should have been able to do after being up by 13 - 3 at half time.

Sadly the team will now no doubt have to endure more 'choker' tags from a dissappointed public. Not since 1987 has New Zealand won the World Cup and for a country which lives and breaths this sport this Cup has become an obsession, one which now must be full filled when New Zealand hosts the next Cup in 2011.

The public will be looking for scape goats and we will be left wondering how this team, which was touted as the best prepared All Black team of any to visit the World Cup, could be exiting the tournament at such an early stage.

Alinghi too good for Team New Zealand

I've got nothing really to say about running at present so bare with me while I dwell on Emirates Team New Zealand's loss in the Americas Cup this week.

If anyone hasn't yet seen the stunning finish of the final Americas Cup race off Valencia held on Tuesday then this clip is a must view. Alinghi's winning margin of one second was the narrowest margin in Americas Cup history and it took Alinghi to 5 -2 in the best of nine series. Many commentators considered this Cup to be the most exciting and toughest fought Americas Cup match since Australia 3 took the cup off the New York Yacht Club in 1983.

As hard as it is for me to admit, the Emirates Team New Zealand crew were out sailed by a better crew and ALinghi were the deserved winners of the Cup. Dean Barker and his crew led at various stages in five of the seven races however through a combination of bad luck and poor decision making, including a disastrous lapse in judgement leading to the penalty they copped in the final race, they let slip the last four races to go down 5-2 having led the series early on by two races to one.

The Americas Cup is however in many New Zealander's blood now, and the team has already confirmed that they will be back to challenge for the cup again which could be as soon as 2009.




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