By that I mean Wellington. Because of it’s position and the weather in the area, Wellington is an incredibly windy city. I got to experience first hand what the wind was like on my last run there.

I was only going to spend one night in Wellington because I wanted to get moving North and have a few extra days in Rotorua. I ended up washing everything in my backpack because of my own stupidity and needed an extra day for things to dry out.

I haven’t run much in New Zealand. Being on the bus almost every day and being sick for a week has taken it’s toll and I feel like I’ve been on a tour, sleeping or on the bus the entire time. I was excited to get out and stretch my legs.

I took to the seawall heading south from the harbour in Wellington and did ran about 4 kilometers down the path. The wind was howling out of the bay and was pushing sea spray up and over the bank and across the path. I missed most of the big waves but I was still almost covered in salt by the time I turned around.

Running with the wind is easy. It wasn’t actually that easy because the wind was pushing hard enough that I had to lean back into it and I battled to keep some sort of pace.

Running against the wind is not easy. The wind was incredibly gusty and I’d be leaning into it for 30 seconds pushing as hard as I could to continue at the same pace and then it would drop off to nothing and I’d nearly fall on my face. Some of the gusts were strong enough to push my feet together, tripping me up,  and I almost hit the pavement a few times.

I laughed out loud a few times on the run as I felt ridiculous trying to remain upright and run in the wind. I was happy to be back at the hostel and get out of the gusts afterwards and into a nice hot shower.

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