New Zealand Road Relays - Halcombe 2025

FIVE race reports from all our teams racing down in Halcombe last wekend.

We had five teams down in Halcombe this year for the New Zealand Road Relays, charging round the Manawatu countryside in vans. By all accounts it was the best, most fun Owai NZRR outing in recent memory. The racing was exciting, the drama high, the van manoevering exemplary. And the camraderie top notch, what a team! Or, to quote Haoting, OWAIraka till i DIEwairaka. Check out the team reports below for all the details. Shout out to team managers Nick, Keith, Tia, James and Simon and everyone else behind the scenes who helped pull together a successful weekend.

Race reports

Expand the sections below to read the team-by-team, leg-by-leg accounts of racing as it unfolded.

Senior Men B led by James Marsh

Waking in the morning to the sound of rain, there was some doubt as to how we were feeling about a day of being wet, cold and miserable. But as we jumped in the van waiting for our runner to go, the clouds cleared and a sign of the day to come...

Leg 1 was a mission in itself to get our popular chicken headed celebrity to the start line. Haoting was our man and left the blocks managing his effort for the hill to come, as the hill started he was close to two strong club legends (Julian and Keith). At the top Haoting found himself splitting the pair.

A strong handover to Rohan on leg 2 in which Rohan unleashed his pace and was the second fastest grade B athlete on the day. The team had made up ground and moved up to 4th behind Wesley, Nelson and Hamilton. Haoting commented that some of the hills on the leg were "unrunable" which adds to the performance of Rohan.

Leg 3 saw the baton pass to Owen, running a tough short leg facing some short distance experts. Owen ran a great run over the rolling terrain and held out position in 4th place. Many of runners were left on their knees after this one or laid in the mud.

Next came a new Owairaka member Phil who took on the longest leg (4) at 12k he ran a great leg fighting with Mariano in the Owairaka masters team. This leg was tough, open to the wind and with the weather starting to warm up it saw a few dramas amongst other teams.

At the start line of leg 5 with the masters men team leading the senior some friendly banter with Adam G inspired James to send it down the road to battle with former SM Owai captain Dion. When the dust settled inspired by Adam's jibes the SM were ahead for the first time of MM (in 30 years?).

The baton passed to Ben on leg 6 for the performance of the day, running a tough mostly gravel leg he ran the fastest B grade time on the day and put some time in to one of the whippets grade A teams. We had moved up to 3rd overall (2 seconds from 2nd) and Ben built up the buffer to 5 minutes over 4th place. The battle was now for where we would finish on the podium.

On the anchor leg (7) it was Mitchell who set off in hot pursuit of 2nd place and continuing to battle the Whippets team. The Whippets runner was fast though and after some more brutal short sharp hills had Mitchell dropped back a bit but dug deep on a long and tough leg coming across the line to secure a senior men's B grade bronze medal.

Overall the senior men's squad has grown so much over the last 5 years when I first ran the relays. How much more can we grow the senior team, we'll be back next year to find out...

Mens 35 Team Relays Report by Simon Mace

The 2025 M35 road relays team was a healthy mix of youth and experience, with members spanning almost the full age category. The team had strong hopes of being in the mix for a podium position, in the highly competitive M35 race.

First off carrying the baton was the highly experienced, dependable first leg specialist, Julian Ng. Julian had run this exact lap previously and knew what to expect including the really tough uphill final kilometre. Julian ran very well and handed the baton on to Adam Gallagher.

Adam is currently deep in marathon training (Melbourne this weekend) and we were

extremely appreciative to him for making space to race relays in his marathon taper. Seeing him effortlessly gliding through leg 2, making up multiple places along the way, was a sight to behold.

Next up was Adam Berry who was called in at late notice (under three weeks ago) to cover for injury. Adam didn’t take much convincing and ramped up his training for a short, but effective, relays specific block. Adam punched out leg 3 with real determination and handed over to Mariano.

Mariano Piagentini had been was an obvious choice for the longest relay leg due to strong performances at both the Auckland and NZ Road Championship races. Mariano took the baton and within ten strides had settled into his seemingly effortless, extremely fast rhythm. Mariano finished his leg looking as good as he started, handed over to Dion.

Dion O'Neale had accepted the challenge of leg 5, which included, 1. loose gravel, 2. a steephill and 3. a heart breaking out and back section close to handover. Dion ran strong and took it all in his stride. Dion handed over to Brendon. Brendon Fisher was the team’s most youthful member, which we thought was lucky when we saw the 3km uphill gravel grind start to his leg. All his hard work was then repaid with a fast, downhill tarmac end to leg 6. Brendan ran really well and we’re all hoping he’ll be back for more “fun” next year.

Brendan handed over to Simon who had been sick for the previous week and was hoping for a relatively unpressured leg 7 to the finish back in Halcombe. These hopes were dashed when he realised the team was in third place, with Dunedin’s Leith team a mere 20 seconds behind! Simon started his leg strong and built up a solid gap secure third with some breathing space.

Back in Halcombe, Pakuranga and Wellington Scottish took first and second places

respectively. Congratulations to both teams for strong performances.

Owairaka Mens 35 took third, ahead of Leith and Wellington Harrier Athletic.

The M35 team had a great fun weekend and existing friendships were strengthened. For those who haven’t run relays before, it’s a really excellent event and an experience like nothing else on the running calendar.

Men’s 50+ by captain Keith Burrows and James Clendon

[KB]: An email came out recently saying that planning starts a year out. This is not far off the truth. When we started seeing who was around, it became clear we had a core 5 and one who had booked refundable flights (given last year, very smart). However the 7th person was not so easy, we had a few lined up over the year, but for various reasons they dropped out. We asked around a little to no avail. After last year, it was paramount that the M50 had a team in. Finally we asked Anthony and he stepped up. However then circa two days later, Nick got an email from Ben, a guy he had been chatting with for over a year and he was also available. Suddenly we had 8! Now no disrespect to Anthony, but Ben is a significantly faster guy and this is racing, so one in one out. Anthony got to race in the social team and I truly thank him for stepping up and then gracefully stepping down. But what this meant was rather than targeting the podium, we were now targeting the win against a very strong Wellington Scottish who had had 3 age up. When you matched up the legs, you could see on paper at least it was going to ebb and flow who would be leading right up to the final leg. So game on and very exciting.

Anyway, that is a long prequel. James Clendon is way more talented at writing so over to him :

[JC} I’m repeating myself here from what I have written in the past but in terms of events, I don’t think anything quite compares to the New Zealand Road Relay Championships. In most cases running is a solo sport. As an older runner I’m largely racing myself. Pushing to perform against an arbitrary time I have challenged myself with. With the NZRR every second of every team member counts and you are now competing for your friends and club mates. I’ve run in the last four Road Relays for Owairaka and I knew I would be attending NZRR this year to participate in whatever way I could, in a mixed team, social team or even just spectating. As it turns out, it is really hard getting seven 50+ runners to the start line, and despite recovering from a calf tear I was put in the M50 team.

The buzz of the weekend starts even before your flight. Big groups of excited runners (often in club gear) stand out at the airport. From there the buzz just continues to grow. This year I drove down so missed some of the travel buzz but had the opportunity to drive some of the course with Keith on Friday afternoon. Checking out the meaty hills that both of us would have to tackle in the last km of our runs. Many of the five Owairaka team runners (Social, SM, SW, MM35, and MM50) met up for some Italian for dinner at Portofino which is now a well-established tradition.

Overnight the weather was not great, and we were all mentally preparing for a wet day out. As it turned out though the weather cleared for most of the morning with just the occasional downpour spoiling the spectating at the finish area in Halcombe.

We arrived at the start in plenty of time as the logistics at a road relay can be a little stressful. Our gun time was 8:00am with all the SM, SW, MM35, and MW35 teams. There was a large crowd at the start. When the gun went off and the runners all charged down the road, there was only a brief pause before all the teammates scrambled to their vans to head to the next batten change location. An aerial shot from a drone of the chaos of ~1000 people running in all directions to vehicles and hitting the road would have been impressive. On the road it was a very slow procession, and we only parked briefly before Keith finished the first leg, absolutely crushing it and coming in second, with Wellington Scottish very much in sight.

Our second runner was Robin and he was the fastest M50 over his leg putting us in first place. I took the baton from Robin and got that instant sense of relief you get at road relays when you actually start running. The whole day is chaotic and high stress/high excitement but one thing we all know is running. Once you have the baton in hand everything else just fades away and you just run. I was happy with most of my run (given the awful build due to the aforementioned calf injury) but I don’t think I kept enough in the tank for the hill which really broke me. I couldn’t even make the most of the final hero descent to the handover as my legs had the wobbles. I had dropped us to second place behind Scottish, but I was handing the batten to Nick Moore.

Nick ran an incredible 10k. I saw his splits, and they were smoking. He passed the Scottish Runner at about 5km which means he closed 90 seconds in 5km. Unfortunately, his leg was not 10 but 12.2km long...

We were all waiting at the 4/5 changeover when a message came in that two runners were down, a couple of km from us. We waited anxiously to hear who it might be. A few excruciatingly long minutes later we heard it was an Owai runner.

Keith raced to the van but trying to drive against the traffic in a huge van on the narrow country road was going to be hopeless. In a moment reminiscent of the Austin Powers movie Keith managed to turn the van (twice) without putting it in a ditch. Before we could move however one of the SW teams brought Nick in. He was not in a great way. Robin got on it fast and managed to find some medical assistance form a runner that was also a doctor. The SW team had very kindly left someone with our baton ~2km back (I wish I knew which team this was so we could thank them). Harvs had negotiated a ride back to locate Nick and the batten, but the directions were a little vague with him looking for a fallen runner and not a young woman waving a batten. Miraculously he must have found the spot because he eventually came running though. We advised the marshals as to what happened and tried to get an ambulance, but they were all tied up. The sun had come out and it had become hot and humid very fast impacting a number of runners. Robin implemented plan B and with the help of Oscar and his car (unfortunately leaving the Social team a little short of transport to make some of their baton changes – the sacrifice has not gone unnoticed!). It did feel a little “Goodbye Pork Pie” as we tried to navigate our way to Halcombe as fast as we could to meet the ambulance. The good news was Nick was ok!

As Robin and I were not with the team for the rest of the event Keith will now fill you in on the back half...

[KB]It was a little surreal, driving off leaving Nick, but he seemed in good hands. The 5th leg was gravelly and I did feel very bad for Harv’s, who not only had been lumbered with 10k of the difficult stuff, he had had to endure a 2k warm up as well. However, never a moan, he just got it done, even managing to bring us up from 7th to 5th in the process. Then it was on to PK, a downhill man, who like me not a fan of the ups. However, leg 6 was a gnarly uphill gravel fest, until finally he could open his legs up with a big kick down at the end. He finished hands on knees, looking pretty broken, pretty much like we all did, and he managed to bring us up to 4th.

Finally onto Ben, our star new signing, warming up he looked in the zone. In fact Harv’s and I commented that his warm up pace seemed faster than our race pace. He ran a solid leg, over taking the expected Wellington guy, alas the Harrier in 3rd, not the Scottish one in 1st. And we finished 3rd on the road. Given all the drama an amazing result.

[JC} After a little over four and a half hours of running we crossed the line in 3rd place but incurred a 7- minute penalty due to a baton change outside the change zone, dropping us to 5th place. There was a lot of confusion at the prize giving and we actually received the 3rd place medals instead of my cousins Wellington Harriers team so that has made for some interesting family chats. I was sadly too sore to do the traditional Sunday morning run with the squad (it might take a while to get my injury sorted now ☹). The Sunday run one of my favourite things about Road Relays. There are so may runners out in big groups and enjoying the afterglow from the event. Make sure you plan to stick around for the Sunday morning when you make your bookings for next year 😉

Thanks so much to Keith Burrows for organising everything for our team and making the logistics silky smooth.

[KB] One final note (as if this is not long enough) 😊 I just want to say that I hope Nick is not too hard on himself. There would not be a 50’s team, or any team probably without his tireless effort for Owai. We win as a team and fall as a team. It will just make next years win all the more sweet and as has been mentioned planning in my mind has alreadystarted and I think Nick will get the last leg just so we can follow him a little more closely... 😉 😊

[NM] Ending a relay campaign in the ditch is not the way you want your race to go. I don't really understand what happened exactly. Best guess is a combination of fatigue with a full on race effort and a sudden and reasonably significant rise in temperature on that leg. I race pretty close to the red line and usually judge it well. On Saturday, I didn't - so there are lessons to be learnt there. Thankfully I made a quick recovery with some fluids, salts and sugars in me. I'll go and see my doctor and make sure there are no other underlying factors and have a quiet few weeks. What was amazing on the day was the community that wrapped around me. The M50 team were brilliant - with James and Robin looking after me - and Keith, Pete and Ben keeping the show on the road. Oscar whisked me to the medical tent in Halcombe in his vehicle. The medical people at the finish were amazing too. But there were so many people from other clubs who helped out too - A lovely lady called Julie who found me and looked after me, Dr Cam who was running for one of the other clubs who monitored me for a while. And our rivals in the race - Wellington Scottish - were awesome too. Onwards and upwards!

Senior Women’s Team by Tia Knight

In what might go down as the club’s most successful transfer window in history, the Owairaka Senior Women’s Team was pulled together at the eleventh hour, signing two new members in the process. Lured by the glittering lights of Palmerston North and the promise of quiet country roads, 7 brave souls ventured south by plane and by car to take on NZ Road Relays. And what a day it was! The team showed grit, teamwork, and high spirits through changing weather and a challenging course. And some showed a real talent for navigating a Kia Carnival down narrow roads flanked by erratic runners – big thanks to our drivers Leah and Emily. Here’s a summary of the highs and the lows of our adventure in Feilding:

• Leah kicked things off on Leg 1 alongside some speedy seasoned competitors. The 9.4km course took her through the iconic Feilding clock tower. The noise from the support vans and fellow Owai runners helped Leah conquer the final hill, passing the baton on to Phum for Leg 2.

  
  

• Phum ran a smooth second leg, facing a steady elevation gain over the first 7km before enjoying a downhill finish into Halcombe Fire Station. Her first event in the club shirt and she did us proud, maintaining momentum for the team.

  
  

• Jan took on Leg 3 with a mostly flat start before hitting a climb in the last 2km. A strong finish on the descent brought her into Te Tikanga Marae, where she handed over to Bethany.

  
  

• Seasoned triathlete, Bethany took on the longest leg (12.4km) in rising heat. After a gruelling 1.5k uphill start, she powered through in tough conditions to meet the team at the Makara Road transition station.

  
  

• Emily ran a varied 10km route featuring gravel, undulations, and a cheeky out-and-back to finish. The brains behind the operation, Emily was haunted by the “black spots” of Google Streetview that concealed secret hills. Nevertheless, she was not deterred and finished her leg strong, under a shower of rain.

  
  

• Tia tackled the 7.7kms of Leg 6, starting with a steady climb and fast descent on quiet country roads. The short shower gave way to clear skies and the heat began to kick in. It was a short but humbling route – even the Vaporfly 3s couldn’t make up for her lack of preparation.

  
  

• Kathleen took on the last leg, a 10km, battling against a strong headwind and driving rain, with a tough uphill thrown in for good measure. Kathleen took it all on with her characteristic smile, bringing us home to the finish line and to the country pub, serving thirst-quenching Tui jugs for a price you won’t see in Auckland.

  
  

Our Senior Women showed resilience and heart on a morning that demanded plenty of both. From steep climbs and gravel roads to unpredictable weather and long travel days, the team pulled together and gave it their all. Beyond the running, the NZ Road Relays provide a unique opportunity to spend time with great people. A special thanks to Nick, James and everyone behind the scenes who organised the logistics of the weekend.

Save the date for next year—we’ll be getting a Senior Women’s Team together as soon as the venue and date are announced.

Owairaka Social Club (6-leg course) by Tharindu Jayasinghe

As the four Senior and Masters-level Owai teams assembled for the NZ Road Relays’ centrepiece 7-leg course at 8am in Feilding to highly anticipated fanfare and the starting gun, another team of individuals were still waking up from their slumber or driving across townships to Halcombe, the site of the 6-leg course start line. The Owairaka Social Club lined up alongside the U20, W50+, Open 60+; Social/Mixed grades, with spirits buoyed by the promise of a sixth team member, none other than Baz “Coach” Piotrowski, answering an SOS call to complete the team roster. Neither a six-and-a-half-hour drive (on the morning of the race) nor a niggly calf could deter Baz as he joined the team at Halcombe just as the third leg of the 7-leg race was transitioning.

After some enthusiastic cheering for the Seniors and Masters, Oscar Mahy opened proceedings for the Social Club with the 7.15km-long Leg One which presented numerous challenging hill climbs. His steady start and blistering finish set the tone early as the team held firmly onto 5th place (out of the 21 social teams) over Legs Two and Three via Tharindu and a marathon-training Anthony Lo. Senior Men’s travelling reserve and film-maker Jack Clendon, nursing an ankle injury and on too few winks of sleep due to an onerous week of film-shoots, continued the team’s ascendancy by completing the fourth fastest lap of Leg Four. Things started to unravel from here for the Owairaka Social Club when the team got separated in responding to a medical emergency. This however gave the team the opportunity to ride alongside and cheer on the Senior Women and the Masters Men 50 convoys, which in hindsight was quintessential Owairaka Social Club.

Hilarity must have ensued when Baz completed a valiant 6km-long Leg Five at “Full Jingy”, 50% Effort, and awaited the hand-off for a near half-hour at Halcombe. Inconclusive reports abound about a quick visit to the Tavern as he waited for the cavalry. Hannah Wislang, having also graciously answered an SOS call earlier on in the week to join the roster, ran the final leg around Halcombe Village just as the conditions started to become uncomfortable with intermittent showers and chilly wind gusts. The team having reconvened in time to witness Hannah dash through the finish line, celebrated alongside the other Owairaka teams what was an incredible morning of racing. Special thanks to Oscar and Hannah for providing a trusty team vehicle and to our Team Manager, Nick Moore.

Photos

Results

(7 laps)

Senior Men B: Owairaka Senior Men (Haoting Ma, Rohan Kanagasundaram, Owen Mitchell, Phillip McNamara, James Marsh, Ben Anderson, Mitchell Carlyle) 3:58:40 3rd

Senior Women A: Owairaka Senior Women (Leah Hankey, Phumsile Sikakana, Jan Sisley, Bethany Bromfield, Emily Harvey, Tia Knight, Kathleen Hudson) 4:49:42 9th

Masters Men 35: Owairaka M35 (Julian Ng, Adam Gallagher, Adam Berry, Mariano Piagentini, Dion O’Neale, Brendon Fisher, Simon Mace) 4:00:52 3rd

Master Men 50: Owairaka M50 (Keith Burrows, Robin Miller, James Clendon, Nick Moore, Andrew Harvey, Peter Kenny, Ben Evans) 4:39:18 5th

(6 Laps)

Social Grade : Owairaka Social Club (Oscar Mahy, Tharindu Jayasinghe, Anthony Lo, Jack Clendon, Bazyl Piotrowski, Hannah Wislang) 3:02:02 17th

Let's do it again next year!