Round Rarotonga Road Race 1981

At the start line. Joy and Mike Savage from Hawera are next to Steve Bullock, Bill Raymond, me and Bryn Kempthorne. Jack Foster and Kevin Ryan are next in line.

A couple of years prior to this a few runners from Kapiti decided it would be nice to have a bit of a holiday in Rarotonga and have a race at the same time. It didn't take too much encouragement for me to decide that would be quite a good idea too so we got a team together. We had a party of eight on the package tour with only four of us: Bill Raymond, Bryn Kempthorne, Steve Bullock and me running. There was a four person team's race involved so with very little margin for error we never considered that we might have any show of winning it.

As part of the package we stayed at The Rarotongan Resort and had events such as a Hash run and an 8km fun run (which I won) to participate in leading up to the big race.

The field for the race was probably the strongest they ever assembled for the race. Kevin Ryan, the race record holder, was there along with John Dixon, Jack Foster and Terry Manners. So the rest of us were running for fifth place.

The race started outside the Banana Court Bar in Avarua at 6:30 a.m. just as the sky was beginning to lighten. Right from the start Kevin Ryan disappeared up the road, obviously out to challenge his own record. The other three ran together at a more reasonable pace still well ahead of the rest of us. Kevin never did break his record, I think the conditions were against him, but he was well clear of John Dixon in second, Jack Foster and Terry Manners. I managed to beat all of the bunch I was running with to finished fifth, Bill and Bryn were eighth and ninth respectively and Steve came 11th. This was good enough to earn us the team prize, part of which was four air fares back for the 1982 event. This was the start of a six year relationship with Rarotonga.

Bill epitomises how draining it is running 31.1km in heat and humidity.

The winning team. Me, Bill, Bryn and Steve.