Melbourne runner Owen Piper, pictured with girlfriend Rosie
Abbate, looks foward to running the Dunedin marathon on
Sunday.
Melbourne runner Owen Piper got a pleasant surprise when
he scheduled a New Zealand holiday this month.
Piper, a storeman, decided to bring his girlfriend, Rosie
Abbate, across the Tasman, and was delighted to discover
their trip coincided with Sunday's Dunedin marathon.
"My girlfriend and I decided to check out New Zealand, as
we've never been there before," Piper said from his home in
the suburb of Seaford.
"After discovering that the Dunedin marathon would be running
at the same time as our visit, we couldn't resist fitting it
in to our plans."
A football fanatic in his younger days, Piper (43) found age
caught up with him in competitive football and he took up
running for fitness, competing in fun runs and half
marathons.
The Dunedin event will be his second full marathon.
He has been champing at the bit to do a second after
realising he could have run much better than the 3hr 50min he
managed at his first attempt.
"The last 15km, I felt I could run for another 42km. I still
had plenty of juice left in the tank," he said of his first
marathon.
"But my aim is to just finish the marathon and enjoy the
sights and sounds of Dunedin. Time is but a secondary aspect
of why I run."
He is looking forward to having Abbate cheering him on from
the Taieri Gorge excursion train that will travel alongside
the course on its way to Port Chalmers.
Piper runs regularly with his Siberian huskies, dogs he
trains for competition in the winter months on both dirt and
snow tracks.
His other form of training is what he describes as "boot
camp", where he sets the alarm for 5am to train before work.
"Just getting to work is a marathon in itself," he joked
about the Melbourne traffic.
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