Along the pipeline

Forty years ago I joined a group of runners who would regularly run a course made famous by Arthur Lydiard, the internationally renowned coach of Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and a number of others. Some were almost as well known as Snell and Halberg, and others were like me. A club runner. Lydiard always said that he trained the local boys; all of those he trained in those early days of the 1950s lived near his own home in Mount Albert, and most ran for the Owairaka Club. Which club I joined many years after he had moved on.

The great course (just called Waiatarua) was 23 miles from Lydiard's house into the Waitakeres and back. Because Scenic Drive (the road we ran on back to Titirangi) was narrow and windy in its last segment, we would run along the old pipeline. A large pipe conducted water from the reservoir lakes through filtration and pumping stations to the city's water reservoirs. 

This part of the old course is now home to walkers joggers and cyclists. Plus the occasional serious runner. I was pleased to be on this track for the first time in many years, and it was good to run between the trees which cover the hillsides up and down from the track.