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Napier Harrier Eric Phimister belied his 58 years of age in showing a clean pair of heels to the entire Hawkes Bay Gisborne Masters Men's field at the provincial road racing champs on Saturday.
Raced on a fast flat course in the Gisborne industrial area, the champs brought the best of Hawkes Bay and Gisborne's runners together for the annual contest. Phimister, who ran 38:07, obviously found the course to his liking and after a cautious start steadily worked his way through the field to win the 10km race by a comfortable 47 second margin from his club mate Niall McCormack, who ran a personal best 38:54.
The Senior titles were both won by Gisborne athletes with endurance racer Rhys Burns taking the men's title in 36:40, and Gretchen Morrison claiming the women's in 42:04.
The closest finish of the days racing was in the boys 12 2km race where Napier's Shamus Christison was made to work very hard over the entire course by Gisborne's Brad File. Christison surged several times over the final 500 meters to finally break File's spirited challenge, and won in 7:30 to File's 7:33, while Christison's younger brother Bradley very nearly benefitted from a very strong finish, running third in 7:34.
Napier running siblings were once again to the fore with Eric and Brendan Speakman wining their respective M19 and M16 races, and Georgia Creagh wining the G12 doing one better than her elder sister Annie, who had to settle for second to Gisborne Georgia Harris in the G14.
Hastings race walker Quentin Rew's very strong 45:16 10km walk saw him justifiably selected to the small HBG team to contest the National Road Champs in Dunedin in three weeks time. He will be accompanied by defending M19 Champion Eric Speakman, M45 Cross Country Champion Ross McIntyre, Phimister (who placed second in this event last year) and Brendan Speakman.
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