Spikes beat bare feet
Spikes run away from bare feet
SPIKES won out over bare feet in an intriguing 5000m Otago championships at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.
Aaron Anderson and Danny Baillie cleared out from the front in the race from the first lap and Anderson took the lead.
He was being tracked by Baillie, who was running barefooted and kept up with Anderson’s solid pace.
But three laps out from the finish, Anderson continued a speed which Baillie found too tough and Anderson, a computer science student at the University of Otago, gradually pulled away.
He won the title in 16min 21.05sec from Baillie, at 16min 42.03sec.
Anderson was pleased to win the title in a race that went to plan.
‘‘I felt pretty good the whole way through. And the time was quite good. I just wanted to get to the front and go from there,’’ he said.
The field battled hot conditions, although the wind that battered most of Dunedin for the day was absent at the track.
Baillie said the bare feet was something he liked and he felt it helped his running.
‘‘It just makes it light to run in. I’ve done it since I started,’’ he said.
In the women’s race, Bella Bloomfield was tracked for about half the race by veteran Shireen Crumpton but Bloomfield went clear.
She ended up with a time of 18min 54.62sec and Crumpton was second in 19min 40.55sec.
There were 10 entrants in the championships.
At the Porritt Classic in Hamilton, Dunedin runner Sam Bremner continued his successful season. He won the 1500m in 3min 50.78sec.
The meet featured top performances by Olympic bronze medallists Tom Walsh and Eliza McCartney, who broke meet records in their opening hitout of the domestic season.
Walsh heaved a best shot put distance of 20.70m in his first competition since winning the Diamond League title last September.
The 24yearold cleared the world championships qualifying distance three times and suggested he will be ready for the showdown with Olympic Ryan Crouser, of the United States, in Auckland this month.
McCartney produced a comfortable clearance of 4.40m to beat Melina Hamilton’s former pole vault meet record.
The height was 40cm below her medalwinning perform ance in Rio last August.
Another highlight was Joshua Hawkins breaking the New Zealand resident record in the 110m hurdles. He clocked 13.98sec to eclipse the 12yearold record of 14.05sec held by James Mortimer. — Additional reporting NZN