Records tumble during Belgrove event

The Tasman Masters fifth Belgrove 18km road run on Sunday not only had a record number of entrants but also resulted in three race records being broken.

In winning the men's race in 1hr 4min 51sec, Simon Mardon broke his own record set two years ago by 74 seconds.

He had a good tussle with Brian Kemp before eventually managing to gradually pull away over the last 7km to win by 40 seconds. Kemp, who is currently enjoying his best form ever, also went under the previous best time.

Brent Stebbings had a good run to take third place overall in 1hr 8min 35sec.

Fourth and fifth placings were taken by two M40 runners, Neil Cotton (1hr 10min 13sec) and Steve Flaus (1hr 10min 18sec), who are both in serious training for the Rotorua marathon in six weeks time.

Sixth overall and the first M50 runner was Murray Hart in 1hr 10min 53sec, who also won the Tasman Masters trophy for the highest age graded percentage with 79.51 percent.

The second record was broken by Paula Canning in winning the women's race and finishing 11th overall. Her time of 1hr 13min 32sec broke her own record set in 2006 by 3min 39sec.

Canning's record continues her good form as evidenced by her win last month in the Buller marathon. Second place went to the improving Nicola Mercer in 1hr 22min 24sec.

The third woman was Collette Read in 1hr 24min 21sec who achieved an impressive improvement of 10min 47sec on last year's time.

In the 18km walk, Nyle Sunderland broke the women's record set by Wendy Healey in 2005 by 3min 36sec in recording a time of 1hr 55min 7sec. Her time was also an impressive improvement of 7min 56sec over her time last year.

Stephen Farquhar (1hr 44min 13sec) repeated his performance of last year in taking line honours in the 18km walk. Bevan Cook claimed third place, four seconds over the two hour mark.

Craig and Maren Harford won the 18km relay run in 1hr 26min 54sec to head off Peter Hague and Shane Sunderland in 1hr 33min 55sec.

In the associated 10km event, the first runner was Sharyn Tasker (59min 40sec) and the first walker was Gretchen Rasch in 1hr 18min 1sec.

In the 18km run there were several runners who achieved substantial time improvements. Fay Lloyd achieved the biggest improvement of 12min 19sec in running 1hr 56min 38sec.

Lynette Chambers improved by 11min 34sec this year with a time of 1hr 57min 53sec and Marlborough's Margaret Hazelwood (1hr 33min 40sec) improved on her 2008 run by 6min 45sec. Rob Rix (1hr 26min 38sec) was 5min 20sec faster than last year.