Club members who never went down to Wellington at the weekend missed a great occasion. Despite all the doom & gloom from the weather forecasters, the weather was great, warm and sunny on the way down, cloudy with no wind for the races and sunny on the way home until we hit Taranaki and got a wee bit of rain in the dark.
At $20/head the evening meal was a bargain and you only had to walk a few yards from your unit to eat it. The Wellington & Palmerston North walkers were also enjoying the food plus some others I didn’t really know. So with that lot there it was a very noisy meal as people mixed catching up with old friends and adversaries.
All the women were in one unit except for Marlene and Renee, the later declaring she wanted to be in with the ‘big’ girls next year. Marlene reckoned she had the best deal because she had two males to watch walking around her unit in their undies.
We put in three teams this year, the most of anyone, one A and two B teams. For those who don’t know, the A team is strictly judged whereas the B teams don’t have to have the straight knee but obviously will be ‘sin binned’ if they creep/jog/run. We all gathered in the one unit after dinner to discuss one of what I personally thought was a stupid rule. It said that “All walkers in the B Grade had to be living in the area of the club/association” but this didn’t apply to the A grade walkers. I’m half pie Irish but even I couldn’t understand what this was about.
What it meant to us though was Michael Lane, a resident of Wellington but a TRWC member for the last 10 years couldn’t walk in the B1 team as that team risked disqualification. So after much talk, Wacky offered to swap with Mike. The B1 team were all in favour of this because Wacky is much faster than Michael.
The next day when the news was relayed to Michael, he was understandably upset because he has problems with one of his knees and didn’t want to let the A team down by having to spend time in the sin bin. That aside though, everyone was raring to go; the B teams went off first at 9.00am and the A’s at 10.00.
At this point I will have to divide the three teams up and talk of each one individually otherwise I’ll confuse myself and these days I seem to get confused very easily. Due to outrageous demands by the council down there who wanted $3,000 for a Management Plan, Wellington decided to have the whole thing in the grounds of the complex. So each lap was 1.25km long with three speed bumps along the course. However talking to walkers afterwards, they didn’t find these any bother and commented it was a good course to race on as most of the time there were walkers they could see in front whom they could ‘run’ down.
Denise started for us first, in what was a mass start of the 11 B teams and in about 100m was in third place. She looked really, really comfortable the whole race and ground down the two blokes in front of her to give Renee a very good lead. Renee who hasn’t been doing a lot of walking recently wasn’t walking her best but was still far to quick for those behind her and basically walked on her own for her leg.
Next to take over was ‘new boy’ Harry whom I thought walked exceptionally well with a bolt upright carriage and dead straight legs. He wasn’t walking as quick as he does with his old style but was legal the whole way round. The lady with the navel from Palmerston North who is really quick, slowly caught him and passed to put our team into second place. This only lasted a short while because Wacky took over and passed PN to put us back into first place. He also walked very legally and it is obvious that all his hard work to improve is paying off now.
He handed over to Mike who ground out his leg talking and muttering to himself as he does to urge himself forward faster, to give Marlene a good lead for the last leg. PN had a good strong walker for their last one but she never had a show with the lead that Marlene was given plus the speed at which she walked to bring the team home comfortably in first place.
In B2 team Arthur walked first and spent the whole 7.2km alongside a very pleasant women and I couldn’t work out which one didn’t want to go into the lead. Ivor took over from Arthur and had to walk on his own as there were no pleasant women fast enough to keep up with him. He in turn handed over to Lorraine who put away her smile to concentrate on the job ahead and also walked very well I thought. Dave then took over and by the look on his face wasn’t enjoying the experience until he started the last lap when the smile re-appeared once more.
Next in line was our trip organiser Tanya sometimes known as Tracy who moaned and groaned her way around the course with first one thing and then another wrong with her body; you are becoming a bigger hypochondriac than me Tanya. Still, the main thing was, she stuck to her task and completed her 10km leg to hand over to Michelle to finish the last leg.
Michelle was a tad uptight because she had pulled a muscle in her butt over the track on Thursday which was now touching on a nerve and she didn’t know if she would make it around. She did and walked a nice paced race throughout to bring the team home into 9th place.
Vanessa started for the A team and walked a strong solid race in third place the whole way around. The PN guy who won the leg looked older than me even though he had more hair so how he could out walk Vanessa I do not know. When she handed over to Tony the Auckland woman was a good 100m ahead of him. He couldn’t manage to catch her but did close the gap considerably and in doing so passed the PN walker to take the team into 2nd place, a position they never lost. He wasn’t as upright as he was for the coaching seminar but looked far better than he has been for years.
When he handed over to Rachel she had the unenviable task of trying to catch Dave Sims the ex NZ 50km champion. Again she closed the gap but couldn’t catch him which left Eric to chase Mike Parker, again a practical impossible task as you can’t give these sorts of walkers big leads. Eric handed over to Peter who walked very well, so between the five of them they gave Michael enough time up his sleeve, so that even if getting sin binned the team could still come in second and so it turned out. Michael walked well with a shortened stride and I think he got around without too much trouble. He did have to sit out for a minute but Vanessa confessed it was because of her which I find hard to believe.
My overall opinion, well I thought most members walked exceptionally well and I was especially pleased with the B grade walkers whose techniques have come on in leaps and bounds and I reckon we can put in more than one A grade team next year which will be a an indication as to how well the club is developing.
Despite a few not walking as well as they know how they can, everyone one gave 110% on their leg and you could see it on their faces as they crossed the line at the finish; so a big pat on the back to you all, you did the club proud.
I know that Denise was thrilled with her time, Michelle was 5s faster than her estimated time with Marlene 3s ahead of hers. Ivor said he walked faster than he did in the Norm Read last week and Arthur had a big grin on his face although I don’t know if that was to do with his time.
It now seems to be part of the club’s unwritten rule for relay races, that it is no longer a hand over but a bum pat, see what you’ve done Ivor, we’ll soon have the name of the Taranaki Groper’s Club. The other teams seemed quite bemused seeing the recipient of the changeover prepare themselves in various ways for that vital touch.
Whilst on the subject of derrieres what is it with the women lately as we had three of them massaging in Deep Heat before the start of their leg and all refusing assistance from male bystanders.
Finally, many thanks must go to Tanya for organising this special event and the work involved doing it, well done girl. To Harry who came up trumps to transport the tent which allowed Eric to get back very early for a family function. To Colin for going all the way down there to judge and was too far away to see and enjoy the fun that was being had by the rest of us. To Theresa for being a jolly and vociferous supporter. To all the walkers for not only giving their all on the course but did lap counting as well and for all their loud and very often funny support of each other and their sportsmanship to other teams.
The tent had it’s first official opening and was great, money well spent. We all came away very happy but the happiest of the lot must be Arthur as he was the only one who SCORED; his pleasant walking companion gave him her address afterwards and wanted a photo of them walking together. No wonder he decided to stop over. See folks, you are never too old. Being a leg man I have included pictures of individuals so they can see how well they looked.
Bystander
