Lake City Athletic Club teams have achieved a second and a fourth placing at the National Road Relay Championships.
Contested in Nelson last weekend over a challenging partly off-road 64km distance, it attracted teams from throughout New Zealand.
The club's senior men's team finished 4th in the A grade, thebest result by the club in that section. The eight-person team was made up of some talented young runners with a couple of well performed masters to make up the numbers.
Sam Osborne got the team off to a great start before the run of the day was produced by Nic Pannett, who ran the team into third place.With one lap to go the team was in fourth, only a minute off the bronze medal. In the last lap Steve O'Callaghan ran gallantly but could not close the gap. The overall winners were Wellington Scottish. Other Lake City team members were Chris Corney, Tony Broadhead, Nic Portas, Sjors Corporaal and Adrian Lysaght.
The Lake City Masters men's 50 years plus team put in a fantastic effort to come away with a silver medal. The Athletics Nelson team was nearly seven minutes ahead of Lake City and Auckland University going into the last leg, but an injury meant their runner had to be replaced and this resulted in a seven-minute time penalty. In the end Auckland University took out gold by nearly two minutes over Lake City with Nelson still managing to pick up the bronze medal.
The team in running order was Trevor Ogilvie, Dave Cronshaw, Ray Hewlett, Paul Carpenter, Bruce Edwards, Graeme Pearson, Campbell Horn and Colin Earwaker.
The relay was the last inter-club competition for this winter. Tomorrow morning the final event of the club's winter calendar is being held, a 10km off-road run/walk in Whakarewarewa Forest.
