33:29

So there you have it. I’ve given the game away already. Four numbers and a semi-colon. No punch-lines, no build-up, no guess work, just straight in there. You don’t need to read any further as you’ve already seen the outcome. Confused?? Well maybe I should explain myself. I think I know what will help. Here is the title in its full form:

New Zealand 10000m Championships, 5 th January 2010, Tauranga (New Zealand)
1, Andrea Woodvine (Guest), UK 33:29.94min

A track Pb by over two minutes, an overall Pb by over a minute. 55th on the all-time UK rankings, top of the rankings for 2010 (although admittedly we are only 5 days in lol) and probably most importantly one of Andrea’s best ever races.

So I’ll start at the beginning…

The New Zealand 10000m Championships were the focus of our day today. Most of the others on the tour headed south to New Zealand national park to do some sightseeing. A select few (including myself and Andrea) were either running at or spectating at the championships in Tauranga in the evening. We headed to the north coast early at around midday, and having a few hours to kill, had some lunch in the park and watched a movie - Sherlock Holmes.

As the race approached the nerves were beginning to show and both Dylan Gant (from Canada) and Andrea prepared for their races. As with the 3000m on the Friday night at the Tauranga Twilight the conditions weren’t perfect - a little windy considering the runners were about to grind out 25 laps of the track. However, it was slightly better. Still it is something you have to consider before setting out, so we revised our aims and aimed to run low 34min. A target we thought realistic but would require everything to go well. Both the men and women were running together to we were hoping that there may be others around Andrea, but in something like a 10k you have to mentally prepare yourself to run on your own. Good job we did as when the gun went Andrea was on her own, stuck between the men and women. There was a small group ahead to gauge against and after a few laps there were some lapped runners to focus on as well.

Andrea’s first lap was 81s and amongst her slowest. After that she was like a metronome, churning out 80 and 81 second laps the whole way. There was only one lap, four from the end, where Andrea slipped to 82 seconds. On the last lap Andrea was able pick it up and finish with a 71s lap to dip under 33:30min - way better than what we had expected. An amazing surprise!

So both Andrea and myself were elated and the journey down to National Park in the early hours was one of both tiredness and happiness. This is the first race Andrea has nailed in a long time and hopefully the start of things to come…

Here is to a great 2010!!


Andrea doing her best metronome impression