Distance today = 54.29 km; Total distance = 21,942.30 km; Location = Kambalda – 31 10.780’ S, 121 38.593′ E; Start time = 0744, Finish time = 1652

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/331325144

We waved goodbye to Grace at Kalgoorlie Airport this morning. It was sad to see her go, as it will be nearly three months before we’re home and able to catch up with Hannah and Grace again. But it will pass quickly. It was almost a year ago that we waved goodbye to Hannah at Memphis Airport. A few years ago, I never would have believed that we’d be saying goodbye to the girls from airports like Memphis and Kalgoorlie.

We had a final dinner last night, opposite the hotel where Herbert Hoover stayed when he lived in Kalgoorlie. For those who don’t know, Hoover was a young mining engineer in the region in the last years of the 19th century, who went on to become US President between 1929 and 1933. I was surprised to find out that his first home in Australia was in Coolgardie.

I ran out of Kalgoorlie this morning under cloudless blue skies. After about 10 km, I heard Grace’s plane taking off, and turned to see it rising in the sky. I watched it until it became a dot, finally disappearing.

About half way through the day, as I approached where Carmel had pulled over, a car stopped and guy got out. He’d passed me and realised I was the guy he’d seen on the Today Show. Brendan was from south of Dunedin in NZ, but now works in Kambalda. He had his young daughter, Iris, with him. We talked for a while before heading on.

It was a good day overall, and I finished strongly. We don’t have any heating in the room tonight, so I hope these blankets do their job.

PS Early this morning, I glanced at the time and distance on my Garmin. A little later I did the same again. Twelve minutes had elapsed, but the device said I’d only covered about 500 metres. What the …..? That’s 24 minutes per km. It was easy to remeasure the distance with Google Maps – just over 1.5 km. That was much more like it. Somehow, the Garmin has lost 1.05 km of distance. Luckily I had noticed it. This seems to happen every so often. A couple of weeks back, it had credited me with 22 km that I hadn’t run (and subsequently subtracted from my total). Today it debited me 1.05 km that I had run. Anyhow, I’ve added this back in. I guess it has something to do with glitches in the satellites.