Runners at the Anzac Day Relays held at Victoria Park.
OPINION
The cooler air in the morning and the leaves on the ground are a clear sign that winter is close.
For local runners, the Anzac Day Relays held last Thursday at Victoria Park, the official opening of the Manawatū/Whanganui Centre winter season, is a further sign of the approach of winter.
Whanganui Harrier Club had already started its 99th season with the Wine to Brine race at the start of April on the same weekend as the North Island Secondary Schools Track and Field Championships, the final event of the domestic summer season.
Although the Anzac Relays is not the huge event it once was, there were still teams from Manawatū and Taranaki joining the Whanganui teams - and the nature of relays gives a vibrant start to the new season.
The Wanganui Harrier Club won both walking relays run in conjunction with the traditional relays. Palmerston North Athletic and Harrier Club won the men’s and women’s relays.
Feilding was second across the line but as one runner ran twice, covering for a late withdrawal, Whanganui Collegiate was promoted into second place. Alec Ball (Feilding) won the award for the fastest time on the first lap with Oliver Jones (Collegiate captain) second.
Palmerston North’s Nelson Doolan ran 5m 56s, some 10 seconds faster than Ball on the third leg, to bring his team from some distance back into a winning position.
In the women’s event, Lucy McLean gave her Palmerston North team the perfect start to a lead they held through all four 2km legs.
It was an excellent final workout for McLean who is part of the New Zealand Secondary Schools team for the ISF World Schools Cross Country in Kenya. McLean is already in South Africa with the team preparing for the championships in Nairobi.
At a time when Athletics Wanganui and the Wanganui Harrier Club are discussing coming under the one banner, it is interesting that the winning teams in the running relays came from the Palmerston North Athletics and Harrier Club which became a joint club many years ago.
The next two teams across the line in the males were Feilding, which joined its clubs more recently, and Whanganui Collegiate which had an Athletics Club member, a Harrier Club member and two newbies in its team.
There have been previous attempts to bring our two clubs together, going back more than four decades. For a variety of reasons, this has not come to fruition.
Things look considerably more hopeful this time and there is a small group from both clubs working together towards this goal.
Athletes are at the centre of the discussion and already there is one registration portal for both winter and summer athletes, saving confusion and money for athletes, and providing stronger teams in open competition.
A sharing of volunteers in a sport that requires a large volunteer base is also a clear benefit of the clubs coming together under one banner.
The approach of winter has not daunted the enthusiasm of runners participating in the weekly parkrun at the Whanganui riverbank. Many who ran or walked at the relays on Thursday were back running on Saturday.
April was the first month in the four-year history of the weekly event that there have been more than 100 starters every week and with the first 100-plus field last December, the weekly average has increased significantly.
While NZ-based athletes’ attention turns to the winter branch of the sport or preparing for next summer, many of our leading track athletes are preparing for the Paris Olympics at the start of August.
It was good to see world indoor high jump champion Hamish Kerr, who holds the Cooks Gardens Stadium record, win in the most recent Diamond League in Shanghai with an excellent 2.31m jump and, more significantly, finishing ahead of current Olympic champion and three-time world champion Mutaz Barshim.
Kerr is part of the 15-strong New Zealand team for Paris - a team that, of course, includes Whanganui Club member George (Geordie) Beamish.
Closer to home, Lucas Martin and Jonathan Maples are preparing for the Oceania Championships at the start of June in Fiji as well as a third athlete, Palmerston North’s Juliet McKinlay (a Whanganui Collegiate student), who trains at both her home Palmerston North track and at Cooks Gardens.
Martin and McKinlay are training in the NZ winter whereas Maples, who is in Japan with the Air Force for another three weeks before returning for a fortnight before departure, is benefiting from warmer, humid weather providing good acclimatisation for Fiji.
Also in warmer climates, it was good to see former Whanganui athlete Tayla Brunger run a personal best 100m (11.75s) in Irvine, California. Brunger will be running in Europe this northern summer.