Wellington Centre Track Champs

The Wellington Track Champs was one of the major events in my lead-up to Nationals. The weekend of the Champs came and it was raining. Hard. Saturday it was raining all day, so we couldn’t race. Sunday it rained in the morning, but we got some pursuits and 500 ITT’s in before it was home time.

The next Tuesday night we were at it again. We re-did some of the pursuits and I got a PB, 3:18 for my 2km pursuit. We also did an Under 17 8km points race, as the only under 17 girl there I was racing against the boys, Conner Johnson, Alex Dent, Lewis Taka and James Truebridge. In classic James style he took off at the first sprint and lapped the field twice. Somehow I ended up being half a lap in front of the others (James not included) with 2km to go. I time trailed my way into second place, although that doesn’t show on the results as I was racing in a category of my own. Nonetheless a pleasing result.

The Tuesday after that we had the sprint finals. I was still racing with the Under 17 boys but in my own category. Due to the lack of female competitors I get another gold certificate for that effort even though the boys all beat me. Next we did some team sprints: for my first one I stood in with the under 15 girls, racing with my 10 year old sister Marti, against Ione Johnson and Elle Pepperell; naturally the other two beat us. In my second team sprint I raced with the under 19 girls. I (the weakest) was put with Gabi Peach (the strongest) against Beth Balmer and Laura Burke. In a close match my team managed to pull back the win, and that concluded my races for the night.


Last week of the champs and it was time for the scratch races. The women and the Under 17 5km scratch race was combined to save time. True to form Truebridge was away before you could even stand up, leaving the rest of us to battle it out for the other placings, although there were actually three races going on in one. Same as the rest of the champs, I was the only under 17 girl competing. The last lap came suddenly and the two women had a big sprint, I tried to keep up with their fast pace but couldn’t quite, but still got first place under 17 girls (very hard as you can imagine with such a big field of, well, one).

Also of note, I was very proud of Jonathan, my brother who placed in all his races except one, in the Under 15 category. Marti (sister) was also doing well. Although not placing she did very well for a ten year old racing against 13 and 14 year olds, showing great determination.

Rachel Anderson did an amazing job at keeping the races ticking over and organising the whole thing. A big thanks to all the volunteers who helped out, and to Gary Gibson for being such a committed and amazing couch, big thanks to Mum and Dad for everything.

Overall a brilliant event, even if the weather wasn’t on our side for the scheduled weekend!