Dunedin Harbour marathon

Press, 2 August 1983, Page 23

Dunedin Harbour marathon

Ashburton’s Richard Hood and Timaru’s John Souter were second and fourth in the annual Dunedin Harbour marathon. Hood led until about 6km to the finish, when he was overtaken by the eventual winner, Mike Tomlin (Dunedin). Tomlin’s time was 2hr 34min 12s, while Hood recorded 2:37:54, more than six minutes slower than his time in the Adidas marathon in Christchurch in June, when he was sixteenth.

Souter’s performance was remarkable. The 40-year-old “king” of ultra-distance running finished fourth in 2:43:51 after having competed in the Canterbury veteran men’s cross-country championships at Tinwald.

Souter led for the first few hundred metres of the cross-country race before settling into fifth place and holding it against a strong competition.

Already this year he has won the New Brighton 50

mile race, the Canterbury and national veteran marathon titles and is now training in earnest to defend his 100 km road title in September. To that end he ran 21km to return to his car after having completed the marathon in Dunedin. A Dunedin runner, Phil Coakes, finished third in the marathon in 2:41:28, while the first woman was another Otago athlete, Jenny Hughes, who recorded a time of 3:0:29s in her first attempt.