Strong start for Sanson
It’s February and Chris Sanson’s year is already looking better than last year.
The Manawatu runner won the Wellington Round the Bays half marathon on Sunday, finishing the 21km in 1 hour 10 minutes 26 seconds, 35 seconds in front of Wellington runner Scott Russell.
Stephen Day, also of Wellington, was third in 1hr 11min 5sec in the race from Westpac Stadium around the bays to Miramar to finish at Kilbirnie.
Sanson had four second places at big running events last year the Wellington half marathon, the Hawke’s Bay marathon, the Great Forest Events marathon at Waitarere and the national marathon championships at the Rotorua marathon, so he was pleased to start the year with a win.
‘‘I was on for a pretty quick time, then fell to bits a little bit at the end and lost a little bit of time,’’ Sanson said. ‘‘It’s early days for me.’’
Sanson, 29, is building up for the Rotorua marathon in May.
‘‘My main focus is, I was second last year, so I want to leave my mark on that race. [Round the Bays] was my first serious race for the year after a pretty solid three months of base work.’’
He is likely to run the Great Forest marathon again in April and will look at doing Hawke’s Bay again in May depending on how his body is feeling.
For the next four weeks Sanson will keep working on his base training, banging out between 160km and 200km a week, which seems like a lot, but is fairly typical for marathon runners.