Varsity Run Third

The Varsity Harrier team came third in the race from Wellington to Masterton. This was very good going as not only had the team to face other teams with much more experience, but also the weather conditions were atrocious.

At 9 o'clock last Saturday morning the Wellington-Masterton relay began in pouring rain. Mike True-bridge ran the first lap for V.U.C.. along the Hutt road into the wind and rain, and finished second, about 15 yards behind the Scottish runner. Ron Milburn took over and followed closely behind Scottish through the Hutt until, about a mile from the changeover at Taita, he went to the front and led by about 15 yards. Ross Rawnsley ran as we had expected and increased our lead to nearly 200 yards. During this lap Moa, last year's winning and record-breaking team, moved up to third place. Between Upper Hutt and Te Mama we dropped back to second but Gerry Fox kept well up with Scottish to keep us comfortably clear of the third team.

It was in the fifth lap, over the Kaitoke hill, that Scottish really cracked on the pace and ran the rest of the race miles ahead of everybody else. For us, Norm Rodley finished two minutes ahead of Moa, who were still in third place. John Holden ran up the Rimutakas and Tony Oow ran down to Featherston and managed to shorten Scottish's lead by one minute.

Between Featherston and Grey-town we had Graham Ward, Dick Gilberd and Tim Beaglebole. They all ran quite well in spite of hailstorms, heavy winds and rivers flooding over the road. But unfortunately Moa had three runners who were seasoned veterans of dozens of Masterton relays (four or five anyway) and they slowly caught us up, passed us in the last lap, and beat us for second place by 75 seconds. Still third was worth a haka and a little other celebration.

The Mayor welcomed us to Master-ton and gave us the freedom of the city, at least I think that is what he was saying, anyway we accepted it—and enjoyed it.

V.U.C did surprisingly well; everybody in the team ran as well as we had expected and some ran much better. The one disappointment was the number of bods there were running in various coloured singlets who are eligible to wearing a green one with a yellow V on the front if we had them there would be few clubs ever beating us.

T.H.B.