Just Across the Island!

From the coast at Coromandel we traveled right across to the other coast the next weekend for my first ever run in New Plymouth.

Ross Steele

Once again Lorraine and I were fortunate for the kind sponsorship of  The Copthorne Grand Central Hotel who put us up for 2 nights, the race was Saturday... but being such a long drive we headed over on Friday.

Which was a real bonus as it turned out that Americarna was on with about a million amazing US hot rods and classic cars all around town and on the Saturday morning they were all in the middle of the city filling the streets and it was fantastic.

Saturday registration was in New Plymouth although the race itself doesn't come to the city.

Come Sunday morning and Lainy dropped me off at the start line for the Half Marathon in Inglewood... I set the GPS to get to the finish in Waitara.. would hate her to have got lost.

As we were waiting for the start the Marathon runners started coming through... and of course Ross Steele was there again... the man is a machine!!! Also there was another legend, the lovely Patricia Stichbury getting closer and closer to her 100th Marathon in November.

Then we were off, the race has an overall downward grade, but you don't really notice it.

To be truthful there really isn't to much to report about the race. Lainy stopped a couple of times for me to catch up to take pictures. But really the race is just a run through the country. Eventually you get down to the State Highway and run along it for a short distance before crossing over and heading down into Waitara to the finish near the beach.

With Patricia Stichbury

One of the highlights of the day was catching up to Patricia just before the finish. While we have been at the same events a few times, she has usually been running the marathon and I have never seen her during a race before. 

The good part of my day was the time,  I made it 1:40:02 which would have been my second fastest ever half, however the official time was 1:40:52 which is my third fastest... whichever it was, It was happy with the time.

We loaded up the car and we were on out way... although only as far as Te Kuiti for a night with Lyndsey and Damien Anselmi, as Lainy was into Waikato Hospital for another week of tests the next day.