My trip to the Welly Secondary Schools at Wakefield Park was my first field
trip in quite a while, so naturally I approached it like a veteran marshal
returning from retirement. Thankfully, the course hadn’t changed too much —
just a few tweaks around the start/finish area to keep everyone on their toes
and stop people from confidently standing in the wrong place.
I was stationed at that lovely section where the
gravel meets the grass — or, more accurately, where exhausted teenagers stagger
up a rough, uneven track before being cruelly introduced to a left-hand turn
onto the golf course. Character building, apparently.
Later I was joined by Nick Horspool, whose
official role was to ensure runners went around the yellow pole. This
responsibility was taken very seriously. In fact, I’m fairly certain “ROUND THE
YELLOW POLE!” was heard more often than the starting gun. Nick also had a
daughter racing, but still somehow seemed to know every second runner by name
as they passed. I, meanwhile, managed to identify about two people all day.
One was Desmond Reedy (Rongotai), the first
male onto the golf course, and the other was Jacob Williams (HVHS) — the pocket
rocket from Hutt Valley Harriers — who absolutely flew around with the fastest
lap of the day. Everyone else was just “that fast kid in the school singlet.”
The whole event lasted less than an hour from go to whoa — which was ideal, because any longer and I might have had to learn a third athlete’s name.
PHOTOS
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