Yesterday, in ridiculously hot conditions, I competed in the Otago Peninsula Challenge (http://otagopeninsulachallenge.co.nz), a 43km mountain bike race near Dunedin. It was 28 degrees when I got up at 7am, and reached 35 before midday, before a blissful Southerly cooled the air down. When I entered a couple of weeks before, I thought ‘43km? phht, no problems’. It turned out to be a lot tougher than I’d anticipated. Most of the hills were unrideable (for me anyway), and I struggled pushing my bike up with blisters on both of my heels from my previous weekend in the Rockburn. Not that I’m using that as an excuse - I’ve got the heat, and an early onset of mild Hyponatremia (cheers, Ben) as perfectly good excuses. Oh, and maybe the fact that I didn’t train at all. Whatever.

In the end I was quite happy with my performance, finishing in 3:34, placing 32/60 in the open men’s, and 71/261 overall. I was blown away with the scenery

• I’ve not spent much time exploring the Peninsula since moving to Dunedin; Victory Beach and the Pyramids were amazing, and I’ll certainly be heading back to check them out properly. I still haven’t bought a replacement camera, and the few photos I took with my mobile phone turned out rubbish; there’s a few albums up on Flickr though (source of the two photos below - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwiweerach/).