This time when we were called to the line, I made my way to a gap in the front row. I knew that I was a contender and I wanted a good start. When the starter said "go", I flew across the road. I had expected Barbara and two of the others from the initial lead bunch at the City-to-City to take the lead, but they didn’t. Within 50m I had opened up a small gap on the other fast walkers, and a sizeable gap on the field. This surprised me enormously, and was not at all what I had planned to do.
I knew that my shins would become quite sore and slow me down, so I decided to go hard and open up as much of a gap as I could before the inevitable occurred. By the 1km mark I had been caught by a group of three, including Barbara. They slowly pulled away, and after about another km, another two people passed me. They pulled away a bit, but I still kept them in sight. As the pain was starting to disappear from my shins, I was passed by another man, dropping me to 7th place overall. I stayed close behind him, and as my shins came right I drew level and then passed him.
For the rest of the first lap I set about clawing back the places that I had lost. I took second place as I came down the street towards Martinborough square towards the start of the second lap. Barbara was still quite some distance in front of me, but I wanted to see how much I could close the gap.
Not far into the second lap I encountered the tail end of the crowds of 10km walkers spread right across the road. I wended my way through the crowds, taking as straight a line as possible, until the point where we first turn into the vineyards, perhaps 1.2km into the lap. Potential disaster loomed ahead - crowds of near-stationery walkers blocked the entrance to the vineyard. I was well warmed up at this point, and moving fast. With a mixture of "coming through", "excuse me", and pushing through the gaps, I made it into the vineyard. It was no better in the vineyard - several hundred metres of very slow walkers blocking the way. Thankfully, there was a row of pampas grass at the left-hand side of the walking lane. The slow walkers were avoiding the over-hanging grass, so I walked straight through it. After a few hundred metres of very dense traffic, the walkers thinned out enough that it became relatively easy to make good progress again.
As I worked my way through the thinning field, I saw a number of fellow club members from Trentham. I passed Della, Robyn Iremonger, Helen Bassett and Christine Taylor (all 10km walkers), and was passed by Jake Jacobsen and Trevor Murphy (half marathon runners).
The gap between Barbara and me was closing slowly, and there was a chance that I might be able to close it completely. As I came out of the last vineyard and on back on to the road, Barbara was only a couple of hundred metres ahead. There was probably less than 2km to go. Barbara turned the corner and I temporarily lost sight of her. Sometime around then she must have put in a burst of speed, because she rapidly pulled away and I didn’t see her again until the finish.
Although I was tiring, I kept pushing hard all the way to the finish. Even though I had the men’s race sewn-up, I wanted to see what time I was capable of. As I crossed the line, I was very pleased to see 2:20:22 on my watch. I had managed the 2:20 that I was told I would need. I had also won my first ever prize for winning a race - a nice bottle of wine to be awarded later at the prize giving.
Finishing times were:
| 1st | Barbara Tucker | 2:17:?? |
| 2nd | Andrew Shelley | 2:20:22 |
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