Runner-up last year, Wellington East Girls’ College’s Kirstie Rae put the hammer down over the second half of the race to comfortably win this year’s New Zealand Secondary Schools Senior Girls Cross Country race in Timaru this past weekend.

Kirstie finished the two-lap, 4km course in 14.35 min, well ahead of second placed finisher Charli Miller from St Peter’s School, Cambridge in 15.14 min and with Olivia Cummings from Otumoetai College coming home third in 15.21 min.

Kirstie was quietly confident of doing well, but acknowledged the quality of the field and trust in her  disrupted build-up in managing a slight hip injury as reasons to stay calm and focussed on the start line.

“Leading into the race I was quite nervous, because it was the last race for my school and I have done the NZSS race for four out of the five years, but I was just looking at giving it everything for my school once last time in cross country,” said Kirstie.

She won her race in a field of 113 starters in the Senior Girls field (from a total of 808 representing 136 schools in all races), in fine, cool conditions on a mostly firm, fast course.

“The start was about 400m of flat grass and then went into some rolling hills and there were a couple of hurdles in there as well. So for the first lap I just wanted to stay controlled and relaxed.​

“Charli Miller went out hard and she was a bit ahead of me and then with a lap to go I started accelerating and getting a bit of a gap on her and ended up extending my lead to the end.”

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Article added: Monday 01 July 2019