A great excercie.

EXERCISE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can.

Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato bags.

Then try 50-lb potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

(I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level,

put a potato in each bag.

.

St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patrick's Day to you all.

Buller Half Marathon

My Daughter Nyle finishing the Buller Half Marathon race walk at Westport, winning her class and fist lady home.
Well done Nyle, the weather conditions were atrocious by the sound of it.
Congratulations you did so well.
To read of Nyle's winning race walk click here to go to her blog.
This photo is from her blog.

Our visit to my sweet Great Gran Child

We have been planing for ages to go to Nelson to visit my grand daughter Teagan and her little daughter Katie May, my only Great Gran child. Today we had the great pleasure of visiting them. I asked Teagan if Katie May could put on her lovely new dress, and Teagan agreed to do so. The long pretty purple dress looked so lovely on her and Katie May looked so very much older than her 2 years. She is an intelligent wee girl and loves to watch children's TV, in her special pink chair with her pink and blue What Not toys that she was quick to show me.


I went armed with lots of sweeties, cause all little children adore sweets and Mother's seldom allow many, that is what grand parents are for; to spoil the little dears. Katie May really enjoyed her lollipop.



After a lovely visit to Katie and Teagan we journeyed on to have lunch and a bottle of wine, with my Daughter Nyle and my grandson Kayne. We had a great afternoon together til Kayne left to assist Shane with his deliveries.
Just time for a quick visit to my other granddaughter Shakara as we drove through Nelson City.
Then it was time for the long drive back home, but what a happy day spent with my family.

Porsche's Christmas Present.

Porsche got a Catnip filled monkey on a string with little bells, from Father Christmas, it made her go all silly! She had to have a little lie down!.

Christmas Joke.

Merry Christmas to you all.
I hope you enjoy this Christmas joke.

My big red Amaryllis

I am so pleased with my Amaryllis, its the first time it has flowered, so I brought in indoors so we could enjoy it in the conservatory. I have a second one growing in the garden, that is more pink with stripes of white, not so pretty.

Rowena's Paintings

Two more of my sister Rowena's paintings. A Cityscape and an Island, I like them both.
Rowena paints abstract so maybe you can see some other thing in them.
She must get her own blog to showcase these great paintings. Maybe she might sell some more of them.

My Sister's painting.

My Sister Rowena has taken up painting with oils. She is going to classes and I think she is doing real well. This is her 2nd or 3rd big painting, it looks rather like a Masai shield all painted, or a pod full of bright red seeds, whatever it looks like to you its quite good and in fact she sold it straight away as soon as she showed it. I am not certain whether it was quite finished when I got this photo there may be some more painting added within the white area.

Porsche fishing cat

Pet Pride Meme.
Porsche likes to sit on this pole with the string hanging from it, to watch the goldfish in the pool below it looks just like she is fishing, and maybe she is!
Doesn't she blend in well with the colour of the trellis.

Nyle's medals

These are the real gold and silver medals that my Daughter, Nyle won at the World Masters Games in Sydney last week.
Her Auntie Rowena from New Zealand just happened to be in Sydney at the right time to watch her niece walk her Gold medal walking race. She is congratulating Nyle just before the medal presentation. It made such a big difference to have her Auntie there cheering her on.

Gold Nyle won Gold

Gold, Nyle won a Gold medal at the world games for 5 kms Race Walking,
Wonderful, she has trained and worked so hard for this, she really deserves
her big moment. I am so proud of her.
Congratulations daughter.

Silver Medal for Nyle.

WOW, Nyle won a Silver medal at the World Games for Race Walking in her age group over 10kms. I am so proud of her, she only lost to the gold medal winner by 1 second! And in a Personal best time!
Next race is only 5kms long, I am expecting big things from it.

Finding the road to success

Finding the road to success. ( from the Nelson Daily Mail Newspaper)

My daughter Nyle's story.

Sometimes it takes time to find your favourite fitness activity, but the passage of time doesn't necessarily mean you can't achieve at the highest level.

Nyle is 42. She's always had some involvement with sport and fitness, but only now is she reaching her peak in the sport she's chosen.

"I am fitter than I have been in my life. I feel younger and enjoy the extra energy I have now."

Nyle is a race walker. Today she leaves for Sydney for the World Masters Games – one of 25,000 competitors from more than 100 countries competing in 28 sports at 70 venues across the city. How did this happen?

"I represented my school in New Zealand national cross-country and inter-school athletics. I had tried powerlifting, and in my early 30s had entered a couple of bodybuilding championships. But nothing had really grabbed my attention as a permanent sport.

"As a dare, I entered the 2006 Taylors Women's Triathlon in the walk section as a recreational walker. It was at this event that I spotted my first race walker and thought, `Wow, how can I learn to do that?'.

"I tried to teach myself. I entered some duathlons at Rabbit Island, and even biked in the Lake to Sea and Lake to Renwick. But I didn't enjoy the biking as much as the other events.

"In 2007, I decided that I would enter the Taylors triathlon again, and so trained for it, and it paid off when I won the walk section and then later that year the Blenheim Women's.

"I then met Sharon McD at one of the Wednesday night 5km races, and she showed me how to race walk and explained the rules. I still couldn't get the hang of the style, and still looked like a recreational walker."

By this time, Nyle had a ton of motivation, but needed to be pushed in the right direction.

"It was Stephen arriving up from Dunedin that was to change how I walked. He joined us for Wednesday night walks in Richmond, and with his coaxing and guidance my style slowly changed.

"Last year I approached Stephen and asked him to be my coach. I improved quickly under his tutoring, winning the Nelson Shoe Clinic Half Marathon in May, then going to the Oceania Masters Track and Field in Townsville in September. I won three gold medals, one silver and two bronze. The golds were for the 10km road walk, 3000m track walk and 5000m track walk."

Nyle faces her first challenge of the 2009 Masters Games on Tuesday, when she will line up against nine other women in her age group at the start of the 10km road walk at Paramatta Park.

Her competition will end on Sunday with the 5000m track walk. There will be eight women in her age group, but a total of 83 on the track in the various age groups.

The route to the start line hasn't been easy. "I have a programme that my coach has made up for me. It alternates distances and pace times usually one long distance walk a week up to approximately 15km, one track session, two drill sessions and three road walks, 5-8km each walk.

"There have been days where motivation has been lacking. I had a long buildup to this event, and it gets hard day in and day out. I don't train well in the frosty cold mornings, so I do all my training in the evenings.

"When it's raining or it's cold and you know you have to go out and do an 8km training walk, you focus on the main goal. That is to get on the podium in Sydney."

Written and published by the Nelson Daily Mail.

My Pet has a pet of her own.

Pet Pride Meme.
This little Silvery Eye flew into our lounge window by mistake and stunned its self. Porsche was fascinated by the bird and seemed to decide to keep it as a pet. She never did eat it, just gave it a few licks and pats then the bird recovered and flew away to safety.

Nyle's Sponsorship training gear.

My daughter Nyle will be race walking in the World games in Australia, in two weeks time, to do so she has enlisted some sponsorship.

To start with she had set herself a goal of how much sponsorship she wanted to achieve. she wanted to sell 10 golds certificates, 10 silvers and 10 Bronze. I am thrilled to say that she have sold all 10 of her Golds, 3 of Silvers and 4 Bronze. she will try for one more week to sell off the last of the silver and bronze certificates and that will be it. Nyle has put her sponsors names and logos on her training top (as per photo's) and yes she does train in it. Her training partner says its like walking with a advertising billboard .. She has also put the same names onto her training bag, it looks very official now.
I think she looks pretty neat in her training gear, and its great that she has managed to find enough sponsorship to assist with her expenses while at the World Games. Now she just has to concentrate on her racing and her times and the health and fitness of her legs and feet,
You go girl!

A blogaholic.

I saw this on Gillian from South Africa's blog and had to borrow it. Oh yes I am a blogaholic!

The Petonche Game

Summer Stock Sunday.
My grand children play a game of petonche at the beach house while at a family gathering. There were no rules just fun.

A real smart dog.

High time I featured a dog for Pet Pride Meme.
Not my dog, just one I found on the net and was impressed with. I hope you enjoy watching him too. He is better at pool than I am.

Stephanie's 9th birthday party

Pet Pride, for the big orange Garfield cat toy!

Summer Stock Sunday.
We were invited to another important birthday party, Stephanie our youngest grand daughters 9th birthday. She had many guests both young and old to celebrate her day, a bubble machine supplied an endless stream of colourful glinting bubbles that danced around the girls as they played on a delightfully hot Spring day.
The girls had a big orange Garfield that was fulled with sweets to play toss with till he fell to pieces and all the candy was gobbled up quickly, there was all the old fashioned games like pass the parcel, musical chairs, pin the nose on the clown and hide and seek games all with prizes for the winner.
Then all the food came out and children descended like locusts and quickly there was very little left. A chocolate mud cake was the birthday cake with candles that we couldn't keep burning in the gentle breeze, but Stephanie cut it anyway, it was delicious.