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The rain abated, the clouds began to lift, the sun attempted to break through, but it was Christine Montgomery who shone in winning the annual Ness Cup handicap mile at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.
First contested in 1935, the annual mile race has remained a feature of summer track and field competition in Otago since then and Montgomery can now count herself as a champion in the event.
It might not have been the case for the 48 year old finance administrator at Cooke Howlison, but for intervention from some of her peers.
A highly regarded single sculler with the Otago rowing club, Montgomery contested her last national rowing championship in 1997 and, discovering she was a more than useful middle distance runner, joined the Caversham Harrier Club two years later.
Three years ago work and family commitments curtailed her involvement with club running when she decided to pull away from competitive running.
But early last year she was approached by national cross country age group and Otago off road champion Louisa Andrew, to see if she would be interested in joining a women's team for the Ponydale cross country relays.
Regaining her competitive mojo, she began training for the national road relays until calf and Achilles injuries sidelined her until early December, when she began running barefoot along the beach for 20min to 30min.
Although handicapped from the go mark on Saturday, Montgomery was never confident in holding out the 21 strong field for the prized silver trophy.
Rounding the bend into the back straight all she could hear was the bell sound for the final lap of runners behind her.
''All the way up the back, I was just waiting for the rest of the field to come roaring past,'' she said.
Montgomery then had to fight fatigue as she felt her legs dying into a strong headwind at 150m. But hitting the home straight she mustered all to cross first in a blanket finish in a running time of 6min 17.78sec.
Four runners hot on her heels all finished within a second of each other. In a photo finish Otago 10,000m champion Jonah Smith (Caversham) finished second in a mile time of 4min 49.24sec, his brother Andrew was third, clocking 4min 49.26sec.
Ben Anderson (Caversham) recorded the fastest time, 4min 29.58sec.
A feature of Saturday's competition was the participation of six promising junior athletes from Southland.
Sam Stewart (17), who is head boy of James Hargest this year, and Kane Findlay (17), who were both in competition on Saturday as part of their preparation for the national championships in early March.
Both featured last year in national competition, contesting the youth men's decathlon, in which Stewart won bronze and Findlay finished sixth.
But their coach Lorne Singer was keen for the young men to experience some competition as they will be stepping up to the junior men's grade this year.
Other members of Singer's group were national secondary schools javelin champion Yvonne van Baarle (16), Andrea McDowell (15), Abbey Johnston (16) and Olivia Allan (15). All featured in results and provided local athletes with strong competition.
Other highlights
• George Woodhouse (Hill City University) continues to go from strength to strength in long jump. The 18 year old leaped to a personal best 6.30m to win the open competition on Saturday.
• Daniel O'Shea (Hill City University) turned on the gas up the back straight to record a comfortable 400m victory in 47.87sec.