We're just back from National Cross at The Mission Estate, Napier.
Blue skies, wintery sun and lots of grape vines, the Historic Mission Estate on the outskirts of Napier proved to be a superb venue for the 2024 Athletics New Zealand Cross Country Champs. It was a lovely peaceful place to hang out for the day, watch the racing, catch up with old friends and running acquaintances ... and get a bit muddy. Credit to the organising committee who pulled it all together and thanks to Mission Estate for hosting us. Hopefully they'll have us back next year.
The course was a 2 kilometre loop - definitely a race of 2 halves. The first kilometre, which is where they hold music concerts, was dry and had a challenging hill while the other half was flat and went through a paddock with some soft patches that rapidly became liquid mud as the day went on. And there were some hay bales to jump over as well. Thankfully they weren't too high!
It's a great event to attend as a competitor or as a fan of the sport. You get to see some top athletes - juniors right through to seniors, and of course cross country attracts all sorts of runners, middle distance speedsters all the way through to marathon runners.
We had 8 senior club runners representing Athletics Auckland in the individual races on Saturday. Everyone ran well and contributed to some strong medal- winning Auckland teams. Here are the results:
8000m
M35-39: Olly Norman 30:04.54
M40-44: Mariano Piagentini 29:05.14;
M45-49: Simon Mace 29:39.08
M50-54: Nick Moore 29:26.17 š„; Daniel Coates 31:40.77; Andrew Harvey 33:49.60
10000m
Senior Men: Ben Anderson 34:59.00
Senior Women: Caitlin Peers 42:05.90
A big thank you to the team at Athletics Auckland - Bruce, Isla, Raewyn and Dianne - for helping us all get there and getting us organised with race numbers pinned to the right places!
It must be time for some road racing.
š· Simon Mace
š„ Livestream footage
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