A new season

Athletics Wellington met last week and drafted a new calendar for a new season. It plans for the first event to be a road relay on 25 July based at the Kilbirnie Wind Needle.

The calendar also includes The University Relays in Paekakariki, Wellington Cross Country Championships in Upper Hutt, the Wellington Marathon and Half Marathon, the Wellington Road Champs in Wainuiomata and the New Zealand Road Relay Championships in Feilding in the 10 weeks between then (25 July) and 3 October.

The Dorne Cup and the Pelorus events, as well as events for which dates have already passed, are all cancelled. It will publish the calendar with exact dates and venues in the next few days.

The Scottish Management Committee will meet tomorrow to plan when and how the club can re-start our season. This will include club pack runs and club races.

In the meantime, remember we are still at Alert Level 2 and all the rules about social distancing, contact tracing and hygiene continue to apply. 

Athletics NZ Virtual Ekiden

We do not know the full results yet but over 100 club members and friends participated.

Athletics NZ will publish the results on its virtual challenge website.

Two of our 50+ teams both broke 3 hours for the marathon. There was a very close race between 35C (Andrew Kerr, Rachael Cunningham, Mike Cousins and Lindsay Young) and 35E (Chandima Kulathilake, Carla Dennehy, Bill Wang and Marketa Langova), with only 36 seconds separating the two teams. Rachael Cunningham’s late run this weekend snuck her team into the lead.

Social Distance Running May

The results from the second half of May Social Distance Running Challenge are not out. But I am sure there will be a triathlon bonus point for Emily Solsberg for swimming at Owhiro Bay on the eve of winter (see above).

The May Social Distance Challenge was the last one. So A big thank you to the Social Distance Challenge organisers who leapt into action back in March to organise this series of events. None of them waited to be asked – they just saw a need, formed a team and started working on their plan straight away. 

Have your say on the track and field season

Athletics Wellington is consulting on what next summer’s track and field programme should look like. It has got too few helpers and officials to run meets safely and efficiently. Some of its most experienced officials have retired.  There are now not enough helpers and officials to confidently offer a similar track and field programme in 2020/21. It also needs new people for a track and field committee, and people willing to be meeting manager on the day of the meets.

Possible options are:

  1. No programme led by the Centre, but active support for meets organised by others (eg. club-led meets such as the Agency 10,000m and the Kiwi Throwers meet, the Regional League meet – if held at Newtown Park, and the Capital Classic)
  2. A much-reduced programme, led by Athletics Wellington. This might involve having reduced programme meets held on Sunday afternoons, following the junior interclub meets, and would only have one field event running at a time.  However, this option still requires more helpers who are willing to plan the 2020/2021 season programme and manage the events on the day.
  3. A programme led by Athletics Wellington, generally similar to 2019/2020 – but this would only be feasible if a significant number of people will commit to help plan and manage the season programme, and support the events on the day as a helper, official or Meeting Manager.

Athletics Wellington has more information on these options and is seeking feedback on what people want. It is also asking for offers of the support that would be needed for Options 2 and 3 to be viable.

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