OK, so this isn't a picture of me, it's my brother, Alan. He finished second in the junior race behind Mike Gilchrist. I managed 44th in the senior race.
1979 was obviously a really wet winter. The Wellington Cross Country Champs were held on a course outside Masterton which was very difficult to get to due to parts of the road being flooded. Then in Dunedin the suburb of Abbotsford slipped down the hill not long before we arrived for the cross country.
The Wellington course was very hilly and very muddy. This meant that it was difficult to stay upright whilst running in bare feet and I finished back in 11th place. Alan also ran in bare feet in the junior race but he was much better at it than I was and finished third. This was despite having traveled over to Gladstone the night before and being served up a rather large breakfast by our Aunty, Jocelyn.
11th place (and probably my earlier third) was good enough for me to finally get selected for a team to the Cross Country Nationals.
You may think that the photo above was taken at a particularly muddy part of the course, but you'd be wrong. It was like that the whole way round. Most of the course had been run over by horses and as a consequence, every stride you took went in to a different depth. Alan didn't seem to have too much difficulty with this but I just couldn't handle it. I remember putting on a bit of a sprint towards the end to hold out Colin Morris and having a smile on my face as I crossed the finish line. I was hardly stuffed but couldn't run any faster.
I remember the trip being lots of laughs with the main wag being Robbie Irvine. Unfortunately I had a bruised rib and whenever I laughed I ended up in a lot of pain. So the lots of laughs also meant lots of pain. What were those tears in my eyes from?
No comments:
Post a Comment