Athletics: Hooper misses out on record in race win

He was not able to knock off Paul Allison's 1993 course record, but Canterbury's Rowan Hooper could reflect on a top performance in Dunedin's Moro Marathon yesterday.

Hooper (29), a carbon analyst from Christchurch and the defending champion, was down but not out when thinking about his win yesterday.

He entered the race with his sights on Allison's record of 2hr 24min 31sec, and was on course for his target time of 2hr 22min before it all came apart in the second half.

"The wheels came off a little bit in the second half," he said afterwards.

"I just ran out of steam a bit. Hit a head wind and it gets tough, especially when you've gone out hard."

"I was going well, but just unfortunately couldn't maintain it through to the end. It's often the way these races go. Either you get it right or you get it wrong."

Hooper said he had the edge knocked off him around the 28km mark.

"That made the last 10km pretty tough."

The last 10km also had the leaders in the marathon field converging with the half marathon. This did not greatly concern Hooper, whose main concern was Sam Wreford (Canterbury), who was chipping away at his lead and beginning to pose a major threat to his chances.

Hooper had opened up a lead of 2min 54sec on Wreford by the 10km mark and stretched this out to just on 5min at the halfway stage.

But as Hooper struggled over the last 10km, Wreford was hitting his straps, coming to within 30sec at Blanket Bay.

"I knew Sam was coming," Hooper said.

"So I just tried to maintain form through to the finish," Hooper eventually crossed the line in 2hr 27min, holding at bay the strong-finishing Wreford, who came in second, 36sec back.

"If you get the pace slightly wrong it can hurt you a little in the second half, which is what happened today," Hooper said.

Both Hooper and Wreford are members of the University of Canterbury Club, which goes into next month's national road relay in Dunedin as defending champion.

"It's looking good to defend that title," Hooper said. "We're both in pretty good shape."

Dunedin's Tom Hunt finished third in a personal best time of 2hr 41min 51sec, after a mighty battle with Stefan Fairweather, fourth.

The newly crowned national senior women's road champion, Shireen Crumpton, may have some explaining to do to her coach, Kevin Ross.

A long Sunday run was all that was on her schedule, but she found out that two people she trains with had done their long run on Saturday, which prompted her to place a late entry into yesterday's marathon.

"It gave me the opportunity to practise my drinks along the way and other things as well, so I just went cruisy," she said.

Crumpton is planning to do a marathon in November but has yet to decide if it will be in Auckland or Tokyo.

She completed the course in 3hr 4min 26sec. Sue Cuthbert was second in in 3hr 6min 1sec, with Kim Herbert-Losier third in 3hr 15min 4sec.