November 2006 newsletter

• Committee news
• A bright looking future
• Hawke's Bay Marathon ... well ... the first half of it
• Barry's second overseas outing
• A perspective from an old time member
• The Masterton Marathon
• Brian Steele’s Column
• A Smile

From your Editor (by Gerard van de Ven)

Here it is, finally, the third newsletter of 2006. I am sure you have all been waiting anxiously for this to come out (yeah right …). For some reason the same has happened as last year. Like last year I aimed for four newsletters, but end up with getting 3 published. The last few months have been a bit crazy with work and being part of the organising committee of both the HB Marathon and the Napier Half marathon has not helped either.

Speaking of which, the Napier Half marathon is just around the corner at the time I am writing this and hopefully still when you will be reading this. The entry numbers are fantastic and we really seem to be growing into a major event, both for us as a Marathon Clinic but also for Napier, with a lot of people coming from outside. On this day (Tuesday 7 November) we are just over 750 entries and we may even get to 800. That would be breaking the record of two years ago with 650 finishers by quite a stretch. In part this is caused by the addition of the 5km event, but the other distances are going very strong too.

In the mean time work has also been done on our website. If you have not had a look lately, go to www.hbmarathonclinic.org. Luckily this kind of work is my profession which makes it a lot easier to do. I will continue to add information onto it over the next few weeks.

This newsletter contains a lot of inspiring information again. We have various reports on events that our members have done, mostly written by themselves, but we also have a report of Jim Tobin on the brilliant efforts of some of our younger members. Barry Lennox has done the New York marathon last weekend, but we only have a very limited report on it at the moment, thanks to Internet technology. Maybe Barry will write something for us for the next issue.
Brian Steele’s column is back again with some very interesting reading. Do you know why the marathon is 42km 195m? If not, read the article.

Also, visit the new Shoe Clinic in Emerson Street. On 27 – 29 November, they have Adidas in the store with the My Adidas program. My Adidas is geared to getting custom made shoes. I am sure it will be very interesting.

Finally, as always, please support our sponsors: Napier City Pak’nSave; Napier Professionals; Eye Deal Opticians; Tumu timbers and Marewa Pharmacy. Without them your membership fees would be a lot higher.