It had become a tradition ever since Peter Snell ran his world record in 1962 that the mile was run at Cooks Gardens but this year it was changed to the metric equivalent to help people chase a qualifying time for the Olympic Games. I never considered qualifying myself since I would have had to improve my best by more than ten seconds, but I was hoping to do an equivalent of the four minute mile over 1500m.
The field contained Tony Rogers, Peter O'Donoghue and Englishman Peter Elliott, better known at that time for his 800m running. There was some good pacemaking for the first couple of laps and Tony took up the pace with 800m still to run. This is around the time the photo above was taken (you can just see me in fourth place if you look hard). Both Peters went with him and they got a bit of a gap on me, but I was still going at a really good pace so wasn't too concerned. Peter O'Donoghue sprinted away from Tony over the finishing stages and won in 3:38.03, just outside the qualifying standard. Tony held on for second in 3:41.4 and although I finished strongly and nearly got Peter Elliott, he held me out for third in 3:43.1 to my 3:43.9.
So another race at Cooks Gardens, another fourth place and another PB. I was really happy with the time and an improvement of four seconds. It could've been time to readjust my sights and maybe consider getting down to a qualifying time for 1500, but I really didn't think I was fast enough for the distance and instead looked at stepping up the distance to 5000m. This time remains my best ever over 1500.
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