Saturday 13 March, Karori Park, 8am for an 8.30 start.

The McVilly Shield is huge. Honestly. You’d normally have to win the Superbowl or protect the planet from invading aliens to get a trophy this big for your mantlepiece.

It is nearly 100 years old. The oldest winners’ plaque on it is 1922 I think. It features a spray of dated and gendered language. It is chipped and battered. It has a host of familiar names etched on it, including many of the Stevenses, Dave Hatfield, and Johnny Hines.

And anyone can win it.

We’ll divide everyone who enters into random teams of three people each.

Everyone can participate, runners, walkers, J Team, seniors, masters and friends of the club. Just turn up and we will find you a team. You can either race it or use it as an opportunity to do some training. 

Each team must do ten 1km laps of Karori Park. No individual team member can do more than four laps. But you can do the laps in any order you like. The race is randomly handicapped after the teams start.

By ‘randomly handicapped’ I mean we get the club patron to shake dice for each team, after they have started running, and add that number of minutes to each team’s total time.

So maybe you don’t feel like racing. No worries. Club members regularly gather at Karori Park (“The field of dreams”) on Saturday mornings for tempos, interval sessions or just a quiet jog. So long as you don’t let your relay teammates know you’re holding back a bit, there’s no reason you can’t combine your planned Saturday Morning K-Park run with the McVilly Shield.

Oh, and the Karori Park Cafe will be right beside the start finish line – open for business during and after the race.