Cross Country at Pakuranga
The Way We Were (1980)

Contributed by
Paul Taylor

When I first joined the Pakuranga A.A. & H.C. I had only done a little road running, and presumed that would be what was done at the running club. You can imagine my surprise on my first day when we crossed the pakuranga highway from the old hall, climbed the fence into a very muddy paddock, where the bowling club is now situated, and started a cross country race in a light drizzle of rain.
Off with the GO runners across the grass trying to keep my new road shoes dry by plodding on tiptoe and avoiding treading in the cow pats thinking to myself this is not what I joined a running club for. I want to be gliding down a nice smooth macadam street on a lovely sunny day. Not out in a rutted, boggy, cow pat strewn, gorse and thistle covered paddock, in a now heavy drizzle with horned wild animals reputed to dislike and chase anything dressed in red, such as the new red club singlet I was wearing.
At the end of the paddock a smiling official with an umbrella and gumboots is directing me through a cattle marshaling yard awash in the now heavy rain with unmentionable looking gloop. Surely this is a mistake, it cannot be this way. Suddenly some early handicap runners catch up and splosh straight into the gloop, splattering my nice clean shorts, singlet and face. So this must be the right way.
I will just pick my way around the edge hanging onto the fence, and try to keep my shoes out of the worst of the mud. More handicap runners suddenly splosh through showering me with gloop and I slip onto my knees and get my new shoes covered in mud. Oh well, I'll just put my head down and plod around the course untill we finish in the now teeming rain. I will go home and never come to the running club again. Maybe I can cheat a bit and not complete all four laps the garrulous club captain was rabbiting on about back in the hall.
I remove my glasses and try to clean the mud from them with a corner of my wet singlet, but only succeed in smearing them, and making it harder to see. Which may explain how I stumbled into a patch of scratching stinging thistles and blackberry, surely the course markers did not direct us through them on purpose!!!
It is now absolutely pelting down with rain but at least the water streaming of my hair is washing the mud from my glasses and I can see to climb over a monstrous seven bar farm gate. I wonder why the Marshalls do not open it for us! Oh I see, they don't want to let the pigs loose which are wallowing on the other side.
The flimsy red singlet gives very little protection from the hailstones battering down as I slip and slide down a narrow path between the gorse to a now raging flooded creek. It's a good job i have ceased to worry about my shoes as I wade thigh deep across the creek, and wish I had done the laces up tighter as I retrieve them from ankle deep glutinous clay which had sucked them from my feet.
I check the time on my watch, but the face has misted over and the hands seem to have stopped. Maybe I will see that tall chap Johnson back at the hall about buying one of those newfangled waterproof runners watches with the digital face.
The lightning flashes and a tremendous rolling clap of thunder drops huge buckets of water out of the sky and sends the cattle stampeding to the other side of the paddock, as I start to climb "THE HILL".
It's not so much of a hill as a gorse covered cliff with a waterfall running over it. As I pant and drag myself up "THE HILL" the rain eases, the thunder clouds pass, and as I reach the top a break in the clouds lets streams of sunlight through. A rainbow arch forms over Lloyd Elsmore Park, one end landing where they tell me they hope to build a clubhouse one day. Fat chance unless they dig up the mythical pot of gold.
Then as I begin to run down the hill a pheasant breaks out of some scrub and whirrs noisely away, and I realise I am begining to enjoy myself, splashing through the mud and grass away from the traffic fumes and concrete paths.
Maybe if I put in a bit more effort I can catch some of those runners who have passed me. if I approach that fence on a different angle I should be able to hurdle it, and if I run on the blackberry strands on the side of the path I should get a bit more traction going up "THE HILL". I will have to get rid of these now old road shoes and get a pair with the nails sticking
out the bottom for next week.
I hope it starts to pour with rain again soon as I don't want to stand around in the hall afterwards covered in this much mud, while enjoying a warm beer from the crate in the corner at fifty cents a quart bottle. I think I will see that taxi driver fella, did he say his name was Mitchell? and get some extra raffle tickets to sell to raise funds for the clubhouse.
Who knows, if we raise enough money the committee might even consider putting in some cold showers as well as the bar.

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Double arched Rainbow © photographed from the clubrooms in 2005