Auckland City Athletics Club Race Night 1

October 29, 2025 - Auckland City Athletics Club Race Night "Fast & Furious"

We ran our first time ever 3,000 m race at our club race night.

3000 m final Women Senior (official results)

🥇Sarah Hellyer 10:07.57
🥈Lisa Hellyer 10:07.61

Watch this video (10:48) on YouTube

Sarah:

I ran my first ever 3000m distance on the track. Although I had run many 4km cross country races and shorter track races, I still didn’t really know what to expect, so the plan was for my sister and me to hang on to the boys for as long as we could and hopefully get a good time. However, due to the new World Athletics rules, we could not run in a mixed race or else the results wouldn’t have counted. Gutted, we decided to keep our heads up thanks to the convincing from our parents to still run the race anyway for fun. The girls in the race were running about 10:00–10:30, which was a fun pace to just feel the distance. The first laps were very slow, with not many people wanting to lead the race until Emma Ward decided to jump in. She led for the majority of the race, which was very kind of her. Lisa took over with about 600m to go, and I followed. At this point, I was feeling really good, and Lisa and I put a gap on the field by 400m to go. We continued the last lap and kept it chill and smooth. The last 100m was a bit of a scare, though, as Isabelle Pickering was gaining on us. Thanks to the commentator, Simon, we were able to react and put in one last surge to win the race. It was nowhere near a perfect race, with not many things going our way, but it was a fun experience, and I definitely want to give the 3km distance another shot. (Although it was a tempo effort, with my average heart rate being 162 bpm and my legs feeling good, I thought it was a good experience.)

Lisa:

My first 3000m race ever!! Due to the new change regarding male athletes not being able to compete in female athletes’ races, it wasn’t really going to be a fast one, and I did end up getting quite sick two days before the race, so I ended up just running it with my sister till the end. We did pick it up in the last 600m, but when we saw that we were not breaking 10:00 minutes (because our previous laps were quite slow), we decided to just jog it in so that we could do some harder training tomorrow. Overall, 7½ laps wasn’t too bad 👍 only lost count once, so I’ll take it.