Interprovincial Cross Country 1982

By the winter of 1982 I had moved from Paraparaumu to a flat in Island Bay. I was flatting with a couple of young women from work and since they worked shifts they were usually able to take my clothes into work so I could run there for my morning training.

It was here that I settled into my regular training pattern which wouldn't change too much for the rest of my career. The training was simple, based around Lydiard concepts, with an easy jog every morning and a varying Tuesday and Thursday run depending on the phase of training. In the base phase these would be a long run of around 20km (although we always talked in miles back in those days), hill springs in the hill phase and repetitions in the anaerobic phase. Because I didn't have to travel so far every day, the training felt much easier, and as a result I got much fitter than in previous years.

This didn't help much when it came to the Dorne Cup though and I put in my usual mediocre performance but by the time the Vosseler Shield came round I was in a better space. Unfortunately the Vosseler is a very unforgiving course and will exact payment in the second lap on those who are over exuberant on the first. I was one of those. I led through the first lap but then paid the price and faded to fourth, with Steve Hunt taking the honours from Peter Arkwright and Joe Radich.

The following week the interprovincial cross country was back at the location of my breakthrough run of 1979. Unlike that year I was more confident of my ability to keep up with the pace and once Paul Ballinger, Russell Edmonds and I had established a break on the rest of the field I felt good enough to push the pace along myself. This was the first time I'd ever raced against Paul and he didn't know me from a bar of soap so must've been quite confident in taking the victory. As it was he didn't push the pace until the last lap and got a comfortable gap on me. I am plagued by a bit of a stitch which comes on around about 8k if I'm pushing it hard. This makes it hard to breathe and on that day I just had to try and relax as best I could in the hope that it would go away an I could stage a late challenge. This didn't happen and Paul beat me by 20 seconds in 37:52. Russell faded badly on the last lap but was still third in 39:18.