There were a couple of contrasting wins in the Otago 5000m championships at the Caledonian Ground in Dunedin on Saturday.
Kirk Madgwick went solo and completed an-all-the-way win in the men’s title while Bella Bloomfield played a cat-and-mouse game to win the women’s title.
Madgwick (22) was running only his second 5000m race and took off as soon as the race started.
He was never headed and finished in a competitive time of 15 min 19.76 sec.
It beat his previous time by about 20 seconds.He had been running shorter distances but coach Robbie Johnston wanted his charge to have a go at the longer distance.
Madgwick said he ran the first 2km quickly but then realised he still had plenty of laps left so battled somewhat through the rest of the race. But he was still a minute ahead of last year’s winner Aaron Anderson.
Madgwick said the wind made running tough but he hung in there.
Bloomfield had previously won the title but was never confident when running with veteran Shireen Crumpton.
Crumpton and Bloomfield swapped the lead a few times in the race but with about a lap to go, Bloomfield upped the speed and pulled away from Crumpton.
She won in a time of 19 min, 7.19 sec and Crumpton was about seven seconds behind.Bloomfield (25), who had won the title last year, and other times, said many of the athletes were feeling the effects of the Port Road Race last week.
Everyone encouraged each other on, she said and that helped as the race got tougher as the laps mounted up.
She was happy with the time considering her heavy load recently. Her next assignment was likely to be the Papatowai Challenge next weekend.
