Cranleigh Great Kauri Run
Records Fall at Kauri Run
Michael Jacques / 23.11.2008
It was a great way to celebrate the fifth anniversary of one of New Zealand’s fastest growing off road runs. A record field of 400 runners lined up for the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run. But this didn’t deter defending champion Ben Ruthe. The four-minute miler has turned to marathon running in the last few years and used the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run as part of his training in 2007, running only as hard as he needed to win. But in 2008 the several times New Zealand champion pulled out all the stops.
Against a classy field that included fellow national rep and Kauri Run record holder, Mark McKeown, and rising teenage mountain running star Daniel Jones, Ruthe simply ran away to a new course record. Leading from the first steps on Waikawau Beach, the Tauranga runner set a record for the Waikawau Lookout King of the Mountain prize at 8k, and eventually arrived in Coromandel Township in 2hrs 27min 50secs to cut 19secs of the record. Behind him Whakatane’s 19-year-old Daniel Jones did well to finish within four minutes, while Te Awamutu’s Kerry Suter claimed third 6min further back.
As classy as Ruthe’s win was, his thunder was stolen by a remarkable run from Australian Hanny Allston. The former world orienteering champion has been studying in Auckland for the past year, during which time she has won the Rotorua Marathon and just a week before the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run she claimed the New Zealand half marathon title.
But Allston herself admits that she’s most at home off road and at the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run the Tasmanian flabbergasted everyone in attendance to finish fourth overall. Leaving defending champion Oksana Isavnina more than 21min in her wake, Allston slashed 14min off the course record with a time of 2hrs 42min 11secs.
In the supporting Cranleigh 13k Challenge multisporter Tim Grammar also broke the record, with 1hr 5min 17secs while Kirsten Milne topped off a great day for Te Awamutu runners to win the women’s 13k in 1hr 11min 29secs.
Race directors Andy Reid and Keith Stephenson were thrilled with the record-breaking spree at their fifth anniversary event. But they were even more thrilled with the record field of 400 runners. Established in 2004, the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run follows historic mining and Maori trails through what was once one of the thickest concentrations of Kauri trees in the country. It is these historic Kauri groves that inspired this event. For every person who enters the event race organisers plant a new Kauri seedling, and Reid says that after this year’s event they will have planted almost 1500 new Kauri trees on the Coromandel.
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