We had 22 runners (7 teams) all pushing themselves for their team in pretty much ideal running conditions – it was great to see…

It is always entertaining watching the picking of the teams for such events – the banter and the jostling for positions in the lines of 1/2/3 lappers – with the inevitable “oh no I’m sort of injured”  and ” I am really slow at the moment” and “you are faster than me so I’ll go further down the line” etc etc… Anyway once sorted and the race was run, the teams ended up pretty even (thanks to Lucie for her well thought out selection method). The winning team of Peter Horan, Garry Wilson, and Andrew Wark finishing their 6 laps in 57:39. Well done to all who ran, it was a great day. You can read the event Race report kindly penned by Wendy Fox below.

For those who haven’t run this before, it is a 2.25km loop on packed gravel with a couple of tough little hills. And the fastest lap of the day went to a speedy Louie Endres in 7:46!

Check out the photos of the event on the Hawks Facebook page <<here>>

# Bib Team Total Lap 1 Lap 2 Lap 3 Lap 4 Lap 5 Lap 6
1 27 Peter Horan
Gary Wilson
Andrew Wark		 0:57:39 09:13.3 09:14.4 09:10.8 09:31.1 09:26.7 11:02.6
2 29 Kerry Rattray
Ross Barnett
Sunil Fernadez-Ritchie		 0:57:50 11:50.9 09:15.8 09:23.4 08:33.8 09:22.0 09:24.4
3 23 Wendy Fox
Paul Reynolds
Richard Ellison		 0:58:22 12:25.0 10:05.7 10:29.4 08:15.2 08:32.3 08:34.1
4 28 Dave Clark
Glenn Sexton
Iain Rattray		 0:59:28 10:43.7 09:33.7 09:44.3 09:21.1 09:48.6 10:16.2
5 24 Vaughan Kestle
Chris Keith
Paul Ewart		 1:00:17 10:46.7 10:32.1 10:25.4 10:10.7 09:17.2 09:05.3
6 25 Mckenzie Liang
Lily James
Dave Gunn		 1:01:24 12:09.5 10:03.0 10:30.8 09:23.2 09:42.9 09:34.5
7 22 Mike Riley
Austin Liang and Claire Liang
Louie Endres		 1:07:12 12:42.8 13:10.4 16:08.1 07:46.9 08:34.8 08:48.5
Report by Wendy Fox
To my shame this was the first Hawks event that I had manage to make it to the season. Once underway I realised what it was I love about being a Hawks member. It’s so great to see people from all spectrums of the running continuum joining together to have a fun time. On arrival a number of us did the 2 km lap to refresh our minds. I for one definitely needed this as I had forgotten that the first 3/4 is mostly uphill.
Lucie directed the show with her usual skill and gusto. We divided ourselves into groups according to the number of laps we wanted to race, one, two, or three. Initially we had six even teams and three children from the Liang family to run their own lap together. All sorted.
Then Chris arrived from the loo. After some juggling we managed to get the seventh team using the three Liang children, with Austin and Claire running in the two lap team as one person each running one lap and Mckenzie running as a one lap runner in another team.
Once settled in a group each sorted themselves from slowest to fastest for groups one and three and fastest to slowest for group two. We were then matched into teams of three. We introduced ourselves to our team members. I was lucky enough to be with Paul and Rich and sorted our running order.
One of the really interesting features of the Waiwhakareke race is that each team sorts its own running order so it is very difficult to work out which team is where during the event. The team I was in agreed that the slowest runner, me would run first with Paul second running two laps and Rich finishing with his three laps.
Having done Parkrun in the morning and the fact that I’m a slow runner meant that the only person I manage to beat was my husband Mike Riley, and he was walking! The last 400 m is interesting as we walked down this path when we arrived. I had no notion that it was slightly uphill until finishing my lap.
It’s actually a lovely little run through the bush, which according to Vaughan K has grown considerably since last year. Half way around we were cheered on from the from a distance by the chimpanzees at the zoo.
A sign of good quality handicapping is that race finishers complete will within a short timeframe. This event was no different. The first six teams teams all finishing within four minutes of each other. The first two teams were 11 seconds apart with the third team 32 seconds behind second.
However Kerry, Ross and Sunil, the second team were quite sure that Pete H was a burglar over estimating his initial time then crossing the finish line first. I will leave you to decide if you agree with that. Well done everybody. Perfect company, perfect course, perfect day.