Tossing the Gumboot

As noted in this blog - I was born and raised in New Zealand.  There are a few things that were part of life growing up.  2 of note were Rugby and Gumboots.

New Zealand is hosting the Rugby World Cup, here is a link for the official website - for those interested.  It kicks off next Friday (Sept 9th).  20 international teams competing including Australia, South Africa, USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Argentina, Japan, Fiji, Tonga.

I am going to follow it online as it is seemingly a fairly big deal back in NZ and I am curious to see how things go, although I have no idea how any team will do.  I played in High School and then for a couple of years afterwards - got knocked out a few times, had a great time.  I was probably more fit during that time than I have ever been, including training for a marathon.  Although it was a different kind of fitness to play rugby than to run races.

Here is what I think is the official video preview.


I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Gumboots.  Everyone I knew when I was growing up had gumboots.  We wore them at home on the farm, to school, to birthday parties, to the beach, up the Mountains - we wore them everywhere.

A fun activity became "gumboot tossing", in fact, there is a town in New Zealand, Taihape (pronounced "tie happy" for those who need to try), has a Gumboot Day - which has among other events that day - a gumboot throwing contest.

Here's a brief video of that....


The thing with throwing gumboots - if you were like me - was that I never really knew where it was going to go or land when I threw it. So, to the point of this post, aside from injecting a little bit of "kiwi" into the blog - tossing the gumboot for me is like what am I going to do for running now that I have finished "my races" for the year. I don't have much of any ideas aside from still wanting to run, mostly just for fun and because it is good for me.

I have no races planned in the near or distant future and I am okay with that. The busy ness of kids school and everything that goes with that, along with soccer for the kids - and everything that goes along with that - will keep me busy. But I am looking forward to finding and making time to get out and run.

One more video - involves running (sort of). Enjoy - but don't watch if offended by the "f" word.