Feilding Moa had two Senior Mens teams compete at the 2023 NZ Road Relays Champs held on a new course at Loburn, Canterbury.
Highlight of the day was a closely fought battle with defending champs, Univ. of Canterbury.
Sam Parry led the team off and set a blistering pace of 3min 10sec/km for this 8km leg. This placed us in third behind arch rivals Whippets RP with Wgtn Scottish (thanks to Seamus Kane) in 2nd and last years champs UCant back in 4th. And that’s about the last we saw of Scottish for the rest of the relay. Sort of 1-lap wonders.
Harry Dixon laid down a 30min 10km, plus an extra 1.2km to pull us up to 2nd. George Varney then set about destroying any hopes U’cant had keeping them a very distant 3rd by 2min 37 sec – going backwards nearly as fast as Scottish. But Whippets were throwing everything at it and maintaining a healthy lead.
Over the next two legs (Damien Lardner and Benjamin Wall), the gap was narrowed to 44 sec by UCan’t. Next up was our Andre Le Pine-Day who had the recently crowned NZ Road champ, Daniel Balchin of University to contend with. Balchin ran sub-3min/km for the 11.20km leg (same one Harry did) compared to to Andre’s not too shabby 3:04’s and pull ahead of us by 30 seconds. Game Over.
But they forgot to tell Isaac Murphy about this impossible task. He reeled in the Ucan runner and piled on another 26 seconds for Sam Stichbury to defend on the final 6.73km to Loburn Domain. While Sam put in the fastest leg for any MU20 on the day, it wasn’t quite enough to hold second spot. University took a deserved Silver medal and us the bronze – the first Senior NZ relays medal we have had.
Of note, this now gives Benjamin, Andre and Sam Stichbury a full set of National road relay medals, having taken Gold in 2019 and Silver in 2020 as Juniors. Sam Parry was also part of the 2020 Silver medal team, so it’s a real delight to see these young guys now stepping up into the senior ranks and performing so well
Our other team competed in the Senior Men B Grade and acquitted themselves well for 7th place – they will have learned a lot and be hungry to step it up to the A team next year for sure.
Venue for 2024 has still to be decided (it won’t be in Feilding though)
Second Version of how things unfolded:
The P Norty boys ventured onto the NZ Road Relays podium this weekend for the first time in @feildingmoa club history. Contrary to certain officially sanctioned governing body reports, all the action was between the Unicycle of Canterbury and your faithful P Norty, with predatory multi-centre super club @whippetsrunningproject away in the distance.
Lap 1 kicked off with a strong showing from our newest token triathlete @samparrynz, setting us up in 3rd behind Pink Dogs and Scrotish. Dad took up the chase on lap 2, @harrydixon5 moving the boys up into 2nd before handing off to @gpvarney for lap 3.
The big ginger crunched the gravel, hills and headwind with ease, extending the gap to UC still trailing behind in 3rd.
Coming in off a solid 3 weeks of training, @damienlardner punished his frail body through 6ks of headwind to hand off to @benjaminwall_ at the start of the second lap, as the Unicorn Collective began to close in from behind.
@andrelepineday1 was sadly forgotten at the side of the road by his A team brothers, before being rescued by the B team in time for the handover at lap 6. An outrageous performance by @danbalchin moved Universal Crumpets ahead of our heroes, but not for long, as @isaacmurphynz risked life, limb and hip surgeries with a full downhill send on the back half of lap 7 to put P Norty back in 2nd.
With only a few metres in it, @sam_s255 headed out onto the final leg for a fierce battle, in the end only 20 seconds separating UC in and P Norty in
Along with the well-timed rescue of Andre, our second A team managed 7th in the open B grade to cap off a great day of racing.
Congrats to our good friends and arch enemies @whippetsrunningproject for a well-deserved and @universityofcanterbury on an epic contest for
Cheers @loburn68 for an awesome event.
