Having eased his way into both the season and his latest race, the 19-year-old has wound up with a record 5000m performance and a personal best by 19 seconds.
His time of 14min 28.37sec on Tuesday night took seven seconds off Blair Martin’s Otago men’s age 19 5000m record, set 22 years ago.
It was an impressive run, as Chignell finished second in the senior race at the annual night of fives.
The event, hosted by the Bays Athletics Club in Auckland, put an emphasis on the 5000m and attracted a fast field.
Former Otago runner Daniel Balchin, now of Canterbury, took the win in 14min 17.71sec, while Otago’s Caden Shields was sixth in 14min 34.73sec.
It had been just the third track race of the summer for Chignell — and his first 5000m.
After running an unofficial 3min 52.65sec 1500m in Dunedin earlier in the season, he claimed fourth in the under-20 3000m at Melbourne’s Zatopek meeting.
Since that was only five days before the night of fives, Chignell had been unsure how the 5000m would go.
"We decided it’d be best to head out at a slightly slower speed and try and pick it up over the last couple of kilometres," he said.
"Instead of heading out at 14min 10sec pace with the pacers, head out at about 14min 30sec speed."
The result had been a good one and capped what Chignell felt had been his best year yet.
It had been the first year that had seen him win medals at club national championships, bagging silver in the junior men’s 1500m, 5000m and 8km road race.He then took gold in the under-20 8km cross-country.
Having trained well, he felt he was in the best shape of his life and, while not changing too much, had started doing a bit of track work of late.
He had been taking his time to fine-tune for the track season this year, which had proved a good decision.
"In previous seasons, as soon as the track season has commenced I’ve gone in all guns blazing and tried to run fast.
"But I think it was a bit of a difference this year going into it, having a wee while, having a bit of a lead-up into it.
"So I feel like I really hit the ground running by the time I actually started the season."
The season would get busy in January as he looked to target some of the Classic series in his first year as a senior athlete.
At the moment that would possibly include a mile at the Lovelock Classic, 800m at Capital Classic, 1500m at Cooks Classic and 3km at the Porritt Classic.
He would also run at the national championships.
