Oceania duathlon champion Katherine Anton showed her preparation for events later in the year is on target with an impressive win in the women's 3000m at the Northland Athletics Championships at Kensington Park on Sunday.
In the combined men and women's field, Anton ran on the heels of well-performed masters' runner
Ian Calder for six of the 10 laps, run in blustery conditions. But the wind and Calder's relentless pace took their toll and a gap gradually opened up, with Anton finishing 26 seconds behind Calder, but well clear of Judith Bradshaw in second place.
While delighted to take the title, Anton saw her run as part of her duathlon training.
"I'm training for duathlons - the first one's on May 15 in Christchurch and I'm building up a big endurance base - on Saturday I did about 16km bike-riding followed by a two-hour hilly run," she said.
"Today, I did a normal Sunday morning ride, 75 km, and normally I run off that to practise running off the bike, but today we had the 3000m track champs so I came along and did that."
Calder added the senior men's 3000m title to the 1500m title he won earlier in the day and 5000m he won on Saturday evening.
Travis Connelly, 14, also competing in the combined 3000m field, ran a well-judged race, passing senior runner Jason Trass with a lap to go and finishing strongly to win the Under-17 Northland title.
Ryan Slater was the stand-out runner in the U17 grade, winning titles in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m and narrowly missing out against promising younger runners in the 100m and high jump.
In the 100m, Slater and Josh Brown produced the closest finish of the meeting, with both athletes dipping on the line for Brown to take the title in an excellent time of 12.3 seconds.
In the U17 high jump, Tyler Edwards cleared the bar at 1.63m to take the title ahead of Slater, who still managed 1.6m at the end of his busy day.
Other U17 title winners to impress were E-J Nathan in the shot put and javelin, Melissa Simpson in the 800m and 1500m, and Hayley Gilchrist in the 100m and 200m.
