Flying and laughing at Arthur's Half

The flickr photoset is here

That would be Arthur Lydiard, the greatest coach of running champions the world has ever known. The Totalsport team put on this half marathon race in the Waitakere's in West Auckland on the same roads that 'Arthur's boys' trained on before. The half marathon is run in conjunction with the Lydiard Legend Marathon - a run advertising itself as the toughest road marathon in New Zealand (probably no exaggeration there).

My fears of becoming caught out in the ‘storm of the century’ prove to be unfounded – with a few swirling winds around and only brief (albeit heavy) rainstorms beore the start. I chatted with Dylan from Five Fingers NZ and Aaron from Totalsport for so long that I was barely ready by the time the starting gun fired.

The half marathon is a hefty affair on its own accord. Although ultra-purists might scoff at running 21k's (and on roads at that), it’s no easy doddle. Up until an hour before the start, I was unsure if I would start- a couple of recent toe setbacks left me unsure if I could even walk. Deciding to HTFU, I put the race number on my walk shorts (I did not even have running shorts) and decided to give it a go.


Early in the run I am confronted with two of my greatest weaknesses - fish and chips and kebabs.

The run started with some gentle rolling terrain I was quite happy with my hill climbing, which seemed to be reasonably effortless for me (most unusual). A lot of runners overtook me on the early hills, although I noticed by their breathing that a lot were pushing near their own limits. We had some decent ups and downs

Heather, a local Bay of Plenty trail runner overtook me early on (along with a lot of other runners), but I eventually started clawing my way back on the longer, gradual climbs. Steep hills are not my forte – but ‘forever hills’ (quite logically – hills that climb forever) are my friend. Fortunately, this run had a huge ‘forever hill’ right at the middle and I had the pleasure and pain of pushing my way up this monster.


'Forever hills' go on - forever

By the time I hit Scenic Drive (which should be re-named Scenic Run), I was really hitting my stride. I’d chosen the lightest trail running shoes ever invented (the New Balance MT 101) to tackle this run so all I had to do was maintain running form and fly down the hill. And fly I did, the last few km, I felt like I was chewing up real estate faster than I have in a long time.


These crazy cats were the loudest on the course - they were great fun.

I finished with a huge smile on my face, I’d conquered Arthur’s Half in 2:05, run every step of a forever hill, embraced swirling and squirrely winds and smiled pretty much the entire way. It takes a pretty special event to drag me off the trails – this is most certainly one of them.

Thanks to Aaron, Jenny and rest of the Total Sport Team. Arthur would have been proud of all the legends out there.

Paul Charteris,
September, 2010