Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Petone Street Mile

I went along to watch the Petone Street mile yesterday and competed in the warm up race for hacks and has beens. Great fun, which appealed to my sense of the absurb. Middle distance runners these days seem to be imitating their illustrious 70's predecessors; nubile young men with shaven legs and big hair. If sometimes I feel like tyrannosaurus rex with my relatively tiny arms, around these guys I feel like a gorilla. The pace in my race felt like a comfortable 5km pace going out but with a tailwind down Jackson street it was the speed demons who took control. Those more aerodynamic swept past me with their fast twitch fibre.

Although Nick Willis wasn't running because of injury it was great to see him out there supporting the event and commentating, and it was his training partner and American champion Rob Myers who won the main race from a couple of local talents. Hopefully this race is the forerunner to a resurgence in street miling, the Queen Street races they used to have back in the day sound great from all the stories I have heard. Good on the organisers and Nick Willis for making it happen.

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