After a final preparation weekend for the team at Queen's Birthday we are into the home straight leading up to JWOC. There were many impressive runs throughout the weekend by members of the team, particular standouts were Tom, Scott and Lizzie who are all showing that their training, despite injuries and other commitments with uni, has been consistently good to get them all to the top standard they appear to be.

Hopefully their successful runs were reassuring despite the helpful talk with Magnus and several emails from Georgia in Sweden telling us the maps for the long and middle are the most physically and mentally tough maps they have ever been on. And that was before the grass had grown chest high which is what we have been told to expect.

However the arrival of our uniforms, courtesy of James and Puma, meant we were able to partially overlook our intrepidation over the terrain, and instead spend a decent amount of time admiring ourselves in our new gear. I think I also now have enough Leppin to get me through the next year or two at least.

Now we move into the final two weeks the training schedules of most of the team are slowly being completed while Tessa enjoys the pool in Dunedin, I plan on venturing out into the more wintery conditions of Dunedin for the first time in 6 weeks. It should be interesting. Hopefully everyones training goes to plan and all the injuries and niggles are ironed out before we leave. Only 2weeks and counting.