Around the world I searched for you ...

Imagine running more than three times around the world!

I’ll get to that in a moment.

John Dwyer (pictured here in the middle) and a few friends recently celebrated his 50th year in running over a quiet beer or two. I have never known why people talk about “having a few quiet ones”.

There was nothing quite about these beers. John had gathered up a lavish supply of exotic beers, and set them before us. We (Hugh, Bill, Tyrell, Bruce, big Ray, small Ray, Murray and myself), like boys in the candy shop, selected beers which probed the very limits of alcoholic intensity. John regaled us with stories of his 50 year running career.

John commenced his running exploits with the North Otago in the halcyon days of the late fifties. He moved from there to Canterbury University (1961), Wellington Harriers (1965), New Plymouth (1966), Auckland University (1971) and finally Calliope by 1974. Calliope has been over the years, of course, the natural goal for many a talented athlete.

Having had already been in the club for 10 years by 1974, I remember well John’s first appearance and the exhilaration that rippled through the ranks.

John is a quintessential historian, and the records he has kept, down to the most minute detail prove this. He tells us he has, up until 28/09/2009, covered 123,896 km, over 12,081 days for an average of 10.25 km per running day.

Now folks, almost 124 thousand kilometres is a long way! It bespeaks a certain level of addictive propensity to running!

Some facts I have calculated for John:

3.1 times around the globe.


One year and 2 months of actual running.


Weight loss of 1208 kg (1.2 tonne)

John has posted some pretty useful times over these 50 years:

220yd 24.5s 1964,   440yd 53.9s 1967,   880yd 1m 59.7s 1969,   1 mile 4m 21.9s 1968,   3 miles 14m 59.4s 1968,   5000m 15m 37s 1970,   6 miles 31m 36s 1969,   10,000m 33m 31s 1976 (Calliope Champs – lapping none other than the illustrious Rod Barker, and renowned track coach, Jack Ralston),   10 miles 52m 47s 1967,   Half Marathon 1hr 13m 48s 1968,   Marathon 2hr 42m 32s 1968.

For a more comprehensive account of John’s efforts : A fuller record of John’s achievements

Though John won't see 65 again, he is contemplating yet greater running exploits. Another short spin around the globe John?

We were rough and ready guys, but oh how we could harmonize…..

Yet another semi-distinguished Nu Zulun sporting event will be held this Wednesday on the North Shore of Auckland.

It is indeed none other than the Eyres Teams’ Race – a race synonymous with athletic excellence and harmonious esprit de corps.

None of your untidy-schoolboy-rugby scrapping here folks.


Back in 1966, at the tender and impressional age of 16, I was in the winning team. Now 43 years on, "older but no wiser", I shall front up again.


The Eyres Teams’ trophy was given to the club by AH (Peter) Eyre featured in the above photo of the official opening run of the Calliope Club on July12, 1930. He’s the gentleman in the middle with the white stripe on his shorts.


The venue for the event has changed over the years. For many years it involved a lap of Lake Pupuke, a distance of fractionally over 6 km. The present course is in a refined and sequestered part of Birkenhead and involves three laps of a 1.78 km course (thus 5.34 km).


It is a sealed handicap event which means that all the finely tuned athletes will toe the starting line together. In days of old, each runner was given a handicap and the teams were drawn by ballot. After the race, the handicaps were subtracted from the times and team totals were tallied to reveal the winning combination.

These days the handicapper has devised a way of making things more competitive. Everyone is ranked as usual with estimated times, but the handicaps are done on placing positions (team as a whole) and in that way towards the finish there is an incentive to pass someone as that runner gains a place and the other runner loses a place. And the placings make all the difference. Then if there is a tie on place points, as there usually is, it is taken on estimated total time for team versus the actual time.

It is all very scientific!


And I shall being running scientifically as I do every year in this event. My running efforts will ebb and flow in rhythm with the varying terrain of this undulating course.


There is one short uphill section, where I invariably break into a walk. This is to strategically nurture my resources for the long, gentle downhill section that follows.

Here is a map of the course.

Who knows where the road made lead us only a fool can say ……

Real runners don’t run on treadmills, unless injury affords them no other choice. The idea of a treadmill is anathema to a real runner. The runner has a romance above all with the long and winding road.

There is a love affair too with bush tracks. The trouble with a treadmill is – you don’t go anywhere. It is a synthetic run.

For the older runner, the training run presents a unique challenge. The first 2 kilometres are hard – getting the body warm and into rhythm once again. You battle through a thousand incremental aches. Then it all becomes worth it. The endorphins kick in – the aches and pains subside.

The half way point is psychologically crucial. You turn for home. Strangely, the greatest part is finishing. There is always a sense of elation.

Why run? To lose weight? To get fit? To build bone density? To have a healthy heart? Well maybe.

All and none of the above.

Perhaps it is best summed up by the phrase – “the runners high”.

“Running, one might say, is basically an absurd pastime upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning in the type of running you need to do ... chances are you'll be able to find meaning in that other absurd pastime - LIFE."

- Bill Bowerman in "Without Limits" -

"For me, running is a lifestyle and an art. I’m far more interested in the magic of it than the mechanics."

- Lorraine Moller, Olympic Marathoner-

More running quotes

This is my 100th entry. I dedicate it to all my running and race walking pals.

I see the stars .... I hear the rolling thunder ..

It is the only appropriate opening for today. There are few entertainers who can take a song already widely in circulation and put their indelible stamp on it. Sinatra did it with "New York New York" which was released by Liza Minnelli in 1977 before Blue Eyes drove it to the top in 1979. Here is the great version by Bennett and Sinatra.

How Great Thou Art has, of course, been around much longer. It has been a staple in the diet of American evangelical Christianity since it was first penned. It origins date back to the 19th century.

George Beverly Shea made it famous in the Billy Graham meetings as millions converted to Christ in the 50s and 60s – not the least one Harry Roger Web, better known as Cliff Richard. Elvis sang it, but I am fairly sure that Sinatra did not.

But it was Howard Morrison who really put his stamp on it, especially with the addition of Maori Lyrics. In the olden days, there was, and perhaps still is, that slippery genre called “Easy Listening”. It was under that sign on the shelf, you were likely to find the likes of Sinatra and Howard Morrison.

Howard Morrison was the epitome of easy listening. Like Sinatra, he could take a song and infiltrate with his unique emotional energy. Like Sinatra, he could have the audience in the palm of his hand. Like Sinatra, he had that thing that makes all the difference on stage – Charisma.

It is therefore quite appropriate that in 2002 Morrison released and album called “Old Brown Eyes”.

Though the way be long, let your heart beat strong …

Usain Bolt has to run hard for 9 and a half seconds or in the case of 200 metres, just over 19 seconds. Haile Gebrselassie has to lay it on the line for 2hours and 5 minutes. Who is the greater athlete?

Well, as I have said before, the question ought not be asked. But we sadly have to start choosing. I think they offer a fitting contrast; of youth with maturity, of speed with endurance.

Usain is a new boy on the block; Haile has been around forever it seems and has a string of titles, gold medals and world records that leave the everyday athlete (like yours truly) gobsmacked.
Gebrselassie won the Berlin marathon, yet again. It was the current world record-holder’s fourth straight win.

A little known movie called “endurance” was put out about his life. I have it on video. To see the guy’s background in basic poverty makes you admire him all the more. However, the movie itself was somewhat tedious and disneyish. Hopefully, something much more worthy of the great man will yet be produced.

I have only run two marathons. I am glad I did. I have no intention of running any more. The half marathon is quite sufficient thanks. Everyone who can should give it a go once. When you hit the wall with 6 km to go, you learn stuff about yourself, you could never learn otherwise.

I wonder if Usain Bolt will ever run a marathon. I hear Gerbrselassie has runs loads of 100 and 200 meters.

Oh my friend we’re older but no wiser, for in our hearts the dreams are still the same …

I first joined Calliope at the age of 14 in 1964. I rejoined in 2005 to confront my some 85 kgs and a seriously flabby midriff. So I have had an association with the club spanning 45 years.

The photos you see span something of those years: in this case 1972 to 2005.

They show some changes (spot the difference).

The change from colour to black and white.

The change from New Balance to Puma.

The change in uniform

And as Cole Porter would say “how strange the change from major to minor”

I am about 4 kg heavier than I was then, but oh so much slower.

Oh and this Cole Porter is for Chris from a favourite of yours!

Words are all she had to steal our hearts away ….

She had what could only be described as a pseudo-American accent – the sort a Kiwi might fain after spending a month or two States-side.

She sat at the back of the bus with her friend, leg draped over the seat in front. She made sure that the entire bus was completely privy to her side of the very one-sided conversation. In between coughing fits, we learned of her boyfriend, relationship hassles, and the dog that ate snail-bait.

Her lines were peppered with that word that signifies a youthful conversation – “like”; It was like …. He was like, and I was like almost like ready like to like laugh.

She bore on like a drill; coughing and “liking”. The rest of the bus settled down to one of those trips home assaulted by trivia and banality. Was it deliberate or was she slightly deaf? Was it a subconscious longing to be heard? And a bus is a captive audience.

Her interlocutor got the occasional word in and she seem to understand the social conventions of appropriate- loudness -when - conversing- on- a-bus.

She got off before my stop, and the bus recovered a sense of serenity. I could feel it smile.

From the redwood forest to the gulf steam waters …

The great Nu Zulun sporting event this last weekend was not the Tri Nations. It was, contrary to some popular opinion, the Red Stag relay run through the redolent redwood trees in Rotorua.
It was a day that drizzled off and on.

The course was, in spite of this, reasonable firm underfoot. It was flat for the first almost 3 km. Then the runner (or walker) was confronted by a demanding hill, which went on forever it seemed. The final section held some treachery with tree roots lying in waiting to twist unstable ankles. My performance was solid, but not up to my recent best.

Estimated times had to be put in before the event. This the club handicapper did. And hats off to the handicapper for his accuracy.

Every running or walking club has a handicapper. It is a thankless task. The handicapper is invariably subject to the scorns and arrows of those who feel hard done by. “I can’t run that fast … why have I been given such a hard handicap?”

This was a day in which the handicapper was vindicated and all moaning mouths put to silence.

It was my birthday on the Sunday. Rumour has it that I was still up at the midnight hour on Saturday enjoying the delights of Rotorua.

Another opening of another show …

It is relay season in old Nu Zulun for runners and walkers. This weekend’s show is the Red Stag Relay in Rotorua. It is billed as an event “through the towering redwoods”.

As I gaze out of my window, the drizzle is palpable in Auckland town and I suspect these will be the conditions to greet us among those towering redwoods.

When I say us, I mean the 30 or so semi-distinguished Calliope athletes who will compete in the relay of 5 km laps.

In some cases, the athletes in question are probably more semi-extinguished. Many bear the scars of years of competition.

Indeed, there are two Calliopians who are featured in this photo above (from the very early seventies). We two, who will be competing in tomorrow's Red Stag some 40 years on are: yours truly and the towering figure of Bill Fell.

~~

I say 'towering' because Bill Fell has come to be known as Mr Calliope'. The title reflects Bill's incredible service to the club for forty years.

~~

The Red Stag event is perhaps one of the softer options on the season's relay menu. It's gentle, undulating, almost soporific 5 km laps hardly compare with the demanding, body numbing, hilly 10 km laps that other relays offer. Hence, I avoid such events.

~~

~~

The Red Stag is a far more reasonable humanizing event, with the relay a seeming short interlude among the thrills and epicurean delights on offer on a spring weekend in Rotorua.

I may be right, I may be wrong, but I’m perfectly willing to swear …

The Bible is a fascinating book. I have read it.

It contains some of the most sublime utterances and also some of the most patently inhuman. It is believed by many to be literally, word for word, the WORD of God. So, it is strange that it has spawned so many versions of Christianity. Associated with these versions are over 38,000 different denominations and a vast range of interpretations.

It is believed by many, as I say, to be the plain word of God, yet it is the most annotated book in the world. Indeed, commentaries that have been written on the Bible are innumerable.

Perhaps the saddest thing is the literalism that many impose upon the text. This unbridled literalism has in turn spawned a phenomenon called “Creation Science”. However, creation science (whatever you may think of it) fails the one key test of what science is about – the possibility of falsifiability. The point that Karl Popper made so well. True science rests on empricism not authoritarianism. The true spirit of science is to try and prove the hypothesis wrong! This is the thing a so-called "creation scientist" is utterly loathe to do.

I find the first few chapters of Genesis captivating and extremely enlightening on the human condition – all the more so, because I do not take them literally. Most fascinating is the stuff about the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”. It wasn’t an apple that Eve ate by the way. Nowhere does it mention apple. In Hebrew, apparently, it was also known as the tree of conscience.

Read it sometime. To me, it marks a shift from an undifferentiated unity to a dualism – from a unity to an alienation. It marks a movement from the divine towards the human.

Of course the greatest character of the Bible is the man from Narareth - Yeshua or Jesus - the one in whom the divine and the human are once again unified.

.... that as you turned and smiled at me, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

September … the golden warm September of our years

It is a quintessential spring morning here in Auckland town, Nu Zulun. A cloudless sky reigns above a hazy lazy Waitemata harbour.

While September signals spring in the antipodes, it bespeaks fall in the northern climes, “when the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame”.

September in the songs is the month that speaks to the drawing on of the latter days of a life-time. It our neck of the world we would have to sing about March I guess, which doesn't have the same ring to it!

The two songs I know well are the September of my years and September song. Here’s a version by Jimmy Durante. That man with the nose! And here is the classic version by Sinatra in the midst of his capitol years.

For us down here, September is the month of the spring equinox. This year it occurs on September 22 nd at 21:18 Greenwich. Once again, the daylight grows longer and the hours of darkness dwindle.

September is my favourite month; after all it is my birthday month – like so many others whose parents had time on their hands the previous Christmas season.

For running addicts like me, it means no more running in the dark. It means hot sweaty runs. It means running through the bush tracks and along golden beaches.

So you see I do believe in climate change! As to what causes it short term and long term – I am absolutely certain – it is our relationship to that big ball of nuclear fire in the centre of our solar system.