Warmth

Here I am, up in Darwin. No matter how long I am away, there is always a certain part of me that feels like it has come home when I land in Darwin.

It has been a pretty cool day. I am up here for work obviously, but it is always nice to take the opportunity to enjoy being up here. Besides the work bit, today I have caught up with Mum and Dad, had a coffee with my old coach Daryl Stanley and also had a lovely dinner. Really not a lot to complain about there. Oh yeah and I also got out for a run. Ticking all the boxes.

The chat with Daryl was particularly good. I haven't seen Daryl for quite some time and so it was great to sit down and spend an hour catching up, discussing the world, triathlon, coaching, training and all things in between. Daryl issued me with a few challenges which I won't go into detail about quite yet, but needless to say are quite challenging. One challenge is in the coaching development space and the other is in the triathlon and personal achievement space. I am not entirely sure how I feel about them at this stage, but I am going to spend a bit of time giving them some serious thought. Have a think and make a plan was the upshot of the conversation. As you know, I do like a good plan.

The run part of today was really only a minor affair, in the end I just had time for a touch over 5km, but my body seemed to feel that was sufficient at the moment. For this run I got to enjoy one of life's rare pleasures, which is running in the tropics in the Dry Season. Right now is about the best possible time to be doing exercise in Darwin as the normally ferocious weather takes a step back a bit and becomes really rather pleasant. In fact most of July up here is like those Spring days that you dream about. Running tonight wasn't hot or humid or unpleasant, it was just nice, much like running in Perth when it is nice. When I left Perth today it was sub 10 degrees, so running up here this afternoon in the pleasant warmth was really pretty lovely.

Tomorrow I plan to take more advantage of the good weather by heading out to one of the local pools for a swim. As I write this it sort of sounds like I am using this business trip and a sort of excuse to train and that is perhaps not an unfair accusation. I am obviously up here to work primarily, but the work schedule on this particular trip is not all that onerous so it is leaving a nice amount of time to catch up with people. head out for runs and other such things. Quite enjoyable really.

It is only a very short trip up here, but I am going to make the most of this warm weather while I can.