Ohope Half Marathon

Budge at the start of the race

a brand new event, the Ohope Half Marathon, was held in Ohope last Sunday . the course was flat and on the road so the perfect training for Rotorua Marathon as it is an easy way to do a longer time trail session. so i decided to tag along with Jo, Jen and Budge who had planned to do the race for quite some time.

there were a few fast runners there. i didn't know how i was going to go an how the body would feel as i hadn't done a running race for quite some time and it was only my second road running race. i do prefer running offroad, having to navigate over uneven ground and being surrounded by lush vegetation, but it's good to do something different for a change.

Karen Hanlen was at the start too, we had a chat about mountain biking. Karen is a local runner who i had a good battle with at Toi's challenge last year, it's great to see some familiar faces at events, it makes racing much more fun.

the pace was up right from the start and the field spread out right away. we were 6 girls in our little groups but we didn't stay together for very long, Helen Rountree from Hamilton took off early on and extended her lead throughout the race to finish in 1hr 20min 22sec, 3min in front of Hannah Barker and 5min ahead of me. i could see Helen for quite some time, ahead of me in the distance becoming this little dot, she certainly didn't only looked like a runner but also performed like one. Karen and i had a bit of a battle for a while and i kept on thinking that she might catch me back up, she didn't, but it was a good excuse for me not to slow down too much. Tracy Clissold finished only 6 sec after me, i had no idea she had snuk-up on me, lucky the finish line wasn't 100m further along or we would have had a sprint finish.

Jo finished in a fantastic 1hr 45min, 5min ahead of Budge (great job for having done bugger all running) and Jen also did really well in 2hr 15min cool!

the event was really well organised and it's always fun to do a race in Whakatane or Ohope as there are plenty of friendly people along the course cheering everyone on and having a good time. it makes racing much more fun.

we had a great trip away and a good time.