31 days in October, and I managed 15 posts.  Hmm....

I'm not cut out for this challenge business.

I am, however, still running.  Running, and running, and running, and today I did my first 10k without stopping.  Quite a good feeling to feel my Fitbit buzzing that I had completed my daily goal of 10,000 steps by 0630!  The problem with running so far, is that it takes so long, so on a normal day it's not a goal that I'm really interested in.  Today it took me 1 hour, 8 minutes and 26 seconds to run, which is about 6 minutes less than the Bridge to Brisbane (we walked 1.4k of that, so it doesn't count as a non-stop 10k) and about 5 minutes slower than Kurt achieved it in a few days ago. 

I'm pretty happy with my time, however, especially as for once I managed to pace myself rather than completely exhaust myself in the first couple of kilometers!

Kurt won a couple of personal trainer sessions in a competition at the physio, so he has gone to get yelled at for an hour. 

The last few days have been particularly busy, as it was Kurt's birthday yesterday, and we wanted to do lots of celebrating.  I managed to sneakily buy him his birthday presents without him knowing, guessing, or actually having any idea whatsoever, which is a big achievement as he is extremely nosey! 

On Tuesday, he opened his birthday presents early as we were going down the coast for 2 nights.  Personally, I think it's pretty much as exciting as receiving a present to give something that you know the other person will go crazy about! 

We stayed in a hotel on the Gold Coast on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, it's only an hour or so's drive from the house, but it was nice to just get away and not have to do anything!  We did, however, get up at silly o'clock both mornings to go surfing!  This was another part of Kurt's birthday present, and it was lots of fun.  We had lessons from 0700 to 0830 both days, and the instructor broke it down to easy steps and Kurt was able to stand up on his board really quickly... mind you, he fell off really quickly too, but by the end of both lessons we had both learned a lot.

The surf lessons ended somewhat dramatically for me as I was stung by a jellyfish when I fell off my surfboard.  This was incredibly painful and included me hopping out of the sea dramatically and then running off to douse it under fresh water.  Kurt, on finding out that I had been stung, was like "meh!" and went on surfing, being a strong Australian man and not thinking anything of jellyfish stings.

For me, it was a different story, being my first jellyfish sting ever, and being in a lot of pain.  However, after getting back to the hotel and having a hot shower - hot water really makes the sting feel better - the burning eased off and now I just have a rash across the inside of my knee as evidence of the vicious attack.

We got home yesterday afternoon, via Bribie Island, which isn't really on the way (being an hour up the coast, while we were already an hour down the coast...), but Kurt wanted to see his parents so that he could get the rest of his birthday presents on time! 

Then, last night we went out to dinner at Hogsbreath with a few friends, which was fun.  Kurt got a couple more presents and then we came home relatively early (2130?) and collapsed with exhaustion.  Okay, I collapsed with exhaustion and went straight to bed, and Kurt played with his new arrows and xbox game for an hour or so! 

And then I woke up bright and early this morning and went for a 10k run... which brings us back to the very beginning of this post so I can stop now !!!