2015 Wellington Road Walking Champs Trentham Sat 22 Aug

In perfect conditions with no wind and a starting temperature of 6 C the 16 starters produced one New Zealand and three Masters age group records. In the men’s race Wellington Scottish walkers had a clean sweep with Peter Baillie winning the men’s 10 km in 55:39 followed by Sean Lake 58:59 and Bob Gardner 1:02.58, all personal best times.

Sue Hoskin from Manawatu was first in the women’s 10 km in 1:02.23 followed by Terri Grimmett of Scottish 1:02.51. Jaqueline Wilson of Trentham was third and had a PB in 1:04.10


In the Junior 5 km 12 year old Daniel Du Toit of Trentham won with a huge personal best with 28:59, for his first time under 30 minutes.

Source: Dave Lonsdale via Athletics New Zealand

2015 Wellington Road Champs Wainuiomata Sat 22 Aug

Individual Results
Team Results (excluding Senior Men)
Team Results - Senior Men

John Earles (2nd), Nick Horspool (1st), Dougal Thorburn (3rd)

Apparently there is talk of moving the road champs away from Wainuiomata to another location. It's all unofficial but the Centre is eying up the possibility if using the industrial roads around the old GM plant in Trentham, This is where the road walking champs are held.

It's early days and of course nothing may come of it but based on yesterday's event it is evident that the narrow course is not suited to large fields, and with tight turnarounds is not conducive to fast times. Not to mention that the location is hard to get and can be a grim place on a typical Wellington day in winter.

Just a word of warning about the photos. Google blogs, Facebook and similar social media applications compress the crap out of high-resolution images. This means that when you look at these images they are basically low-resolution. My original high-res images are kept as archives.

John Earles tries to keep his balance on the tricky turnaround at the bottom of the course.

Race 1: Masters Women 50+, Junior & Youth Women (U20 & U18), Non-Champ Men & Women

Kelsey Forman (WHAC) finished 2 seconds in front of Alisha Gilchrist (Olympic)

Race 2: Boys & Girls U15

Phoebe McKnight (HVH) show she can foot it with the boys in the U15 race

Race 3: Boys & Girls U9

Katie Jordan?

Race 4: Senior Women, Masters Women 35-49, Junior & Youth Men (U20 & U18)

The start of the Senior Women's and Youth & Junior Men's race

Nicole Mitchel, with Sarah Gardner in close contact

Callum Stewart taking out the Youth Men title

James Preston wins the Junior Men's race

Jo Badham having loads of fun

Chloe Thorne celebrates the finish

Race 5: Boys & Girls U11

Alex Martin (Olympic) scoops the line honours in the U11 race

Millie Jenkins (Olympic) 1st U11 girl

Lachlan Parsons?

Furry Hat Race

The only starter and winner of the furry animal hat race

Race 6: Boys & Girls U13

Finlay Seeds (Trentham) picks up the U13 win

Maali Kyle-Ford 1st U13 girl

Race 7: Senior Men, Masters Men 40-60+

The road isn't wide enough

The leading bunch after lap 1

Brian Garmonsway in a sea of yellow

Bert Prendergast now knows how to run a half-marathon

Dave Hatfield

Who is this?

Phil Sadgrove

Ben Twyman, will be handy at the National Road Relay

Ryan McAlister led the WHAC team home

Isaac Murphy WHAC's number 2 man

2015 Children’s XC Series Race 4 Grenada North Park Tawa Sun 16 Aug

Individual results

Team results

There were 8 races today, ranging from 500m for the year 0’s (pre-schoolers) to 2.2km for the year 7 & 8 kids.  Putting a bunch of kids in a park with other kids means that they aren’t going to stand around like adults talking about the weather. No with a playground and a bunch of trees to explore and balls to kick, they were off.  While adults tip-toed through the mud, the children did everything possible to get grubby.  

Every race has a trail blazer or two. These are usually teenage club runners used to cross country running. Their job is to head out as the vanguard in front of the race field to make sure that they follow them through the course.  It goes without saying that some courses are hard to follow with tape and cones everywhere; for example the course this year was different from last year with a significant portion run in the opposite direction.

What mischief have they been up to?

When you come into the Olympic Stadium, to win the marathon this is what you need to look like.

Standing guard over the baggage train

Oops

The vanguard

The vanguard testing the jump for height