And they are off!
Hundreds of athletes pounded the pavements yesterday for the 2018 New Plymouth Joggers and Walkers Club half marathon.
Kyle Bridgeman won the half marathon in New Plymouth yesterday but he had to work for it.
Bridgeman won the runners section of the New Plymouth Joggers and Walkers
38th half marathon from Hayden Shearman by 0.05 seconds.
The first half went OK, Bridgeman said. ‘‘Then I ran out of puff and just made it. I had a couple of minutes on [Shearman] at half way, but he kept pulling me in.’’
Bridgeman, 35, who represented New Zealand in triathlon in the under-23 age group, said he just does the running now because he has two little boys.
‘‘There was a little bit of a breeze. I seemed to have a head wind the whole way.’’
The oldest competitor, James Carter,
84, walked 10km with his daughter. ‘‘I’ve been sick for a few days. I’ve got a bad cough. I didn’t do my best because I’m feeling a bit dicey, but I enjoyed it.’’
Carter used to do a lot of running, he said, and has completed 21 marathons, about the same number of halfs and more
10km walks than he can count.
He was 48th out of 65 walkers.
New Plymouth Joggers and Walkers treasurer Alison Franklin said there were
520 competitors this year, down on 680 last year.
‘‘There are so many other events on now. People just want to do different things. It’s a sign of the times.
‘‘We had a young boy with cerebral palsy, he did the 5km walk. And that was a major achievement for him because he had to get up Brooklands Hill and he practised and he did it. We had a young lad from conductive education, who was 7, and he went with his carer and they did 10km. He did really, really well.’’
It was great event, she said.
‘‘A couple of weeks ago I only had 180 entries and we ended up getting 520.’’
Winners: Half Marathon Run: Men, Kyle Bridgeman. Women, Nina Lupton. Half Marathon Walk: Men, Harry Terwiel. Women, Vicki Adlam. 10km run: Men, Cory Helms. Women: Adelaide Roper. 10km Walk: Women, Gaylene Anderson. Men, Brian Gordon. 5km Run: Rory Bevins. Women: Mackenzie Caskey.