John Walker was the runner at Memorial

ATHLETICS

Last week I asked how many sub four-minute miles have been run in Palmerston North.

There has been only one. It took place at Memorial Park on Wednesday March 11, 1981. John Walker won in 3min 54.6sec, his best time ever on grass and his 50th sub-four minute mile.

Peter McRedmond took Walker through the first 440 yards in 57.5sec and through the half in 1min 59sec. Walker then put in a 58sec third lap and a final lap of 57.6sec.

This week's trivia question relates to the venue of this achievement, Memorial Park. One of New Zealand's longest standing athletic records was set on Memorial Park. Can you tell me who set this record?

There is quite a bit happening on the coaching scene with Mark Searle organising a series of introductory coaching sessions.

Mark tells me the first two sessions of Core Athletics and Race Walking and Sprints and Relays are fully booked but there are vacancies for the remaining sessions, with Level 1 hurdles being the next available on September 5.

These courses are free, funded by Sport Manawatu and Eastern and Central Community Trust through the Coaches Count programme. More details can be obtained from Mark on 06 355 0741.

Following the article on race timing.

Modern technology has, of course, seen great changes in the way races are timed and with electronic timing, problems such as being late starting and the watch no longer existing, but failures still occur and a manual backup is advisable.

Back in the days of Snell's mile, times were recorded with wind up sweep second stop watches, with time keepers often armed with magnifying glasses trying to determine which of the second markers on the dial the sweep second hand had stopped closest to.

The introduction of digital watches many years later was to eliminate this guesswork and now the availability of electronic timing sees the margin of error caused by reaction time eliminated.

Manual timekeeping is a fine art and with .24sec being the accepted difference allowed for reaction time between a manual and electronic time, it becomes a bit of a challenge to see how close they can be to the electronic time when both options are available.

I must say that during club nights both John McDowall and George McConachy are very close to perfect on most occasions.

This differential can often be the cause of disappointment to athletes.

I well remember my first nationals when I was on a high after being told I had finally run my first sub-10sec 100-yard run, recording 9.8sec on the manual watches, only to come down to earth when the official electronic time was announced as 10.02sec.

Another factor not understood by many is that despite digital stopwatches recording times in hundredths of a second, our sport recognises manual times only to the next tenths.

A manual reading of 12.11sec becomes 12.2sec.

Only electronic times are accepted to the hundredth of a second.

Rob Dabb informed me that the closest race of the day at the Manawatu-Wanganui road championships at Woodville last Saturday was in the men's 16 6km event.

Jake Jackson-Grammer (PNAHC) had won the cross-country champs in June over a similar distance by a comfortable margin. However, road running is a different discipline and in this case Jake was matched stride for stride by Joshua Hughes (Feilding Moa). The sprint finish over the final 100 metres went to Hughes by a couple of metres.

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