Marathon: GP's got finger on pulse

James Parsons and friend/neighbour Kristian Day (below) are among the favourites to win tomorrow. Photo / Warren Buckland

If a wicked sense of humour is all it takes to clinch a marathon, then it'll be hard to go past James Parsons.

But come tomorrow Parsons will be packing more than just his laughing gear when he makes it to the starting line of the Air New Zealand Hawke's Bay International Marathon along Marine Parade, Napier, at 8.15am.

That's because the other rivals in the elite men's field will be looking over their shoulders at the 28-year-old general practitioner as the favourite to win the event when the picturesque 42.2km course finishes at the Sileni Estates Winery.

Among the other contenders are homeboy Kristian Day, who finished a minute behind Parsons when the Napier Harriers Club pair clinched the bragging rights to the annual Podium Ohope Express (half marathon) late in March.

Day, a 25-year-old schoolteacher at Frimley School, lives only 400m away from Parsons along Hospital Rd, Napier, and the pair train together a good part of the week.

Throw Kyle MacDonald into the mix and you have three proteges of Craig Kirkwood, of Tauranga, who can win because MacDonald was third in Ohope.

However, Parsons hastens to add he has had a great build up but a knee injury has downgraded his training for a fortnight.

"It's the fastest I've run here," he says, revealing he's been consulting Proactive physiotherapist Tony Snell. "It's touch and go and blooming frustrating."

Needless to say his rivals are unlikely to buy into this game of verbal poker where it appears as if Parsons is calling their bluff.

But it's what the GP says next that reinforces that belief.

"If I can run I'll win but just don't tell Kristian that," he says with a laugh.

The fourth name that crops up like unwanted frost on a car windscreen is Chris Sanson, of Palmerston North.

The 29-year-old swim/surf life saving coach came second in the Rotorua marathon a fortnight ago but Parsons reckons it's a big ask for even elite runners.

But Sanson begs to differ, disclosing he hails from an Ironman background and has done gruelling back-to-back events in that space of time.

"I go better on the second one so my body's just starting to come right," he says, feeling no pressure but prepared to apply the blow torch quite early tomorrow.

Sanson, who has never run in Hawke's Bay, says Rotorua was akin to a training run for someone who only last week quit as a semi-professional triathlete to focus on running.

On a serious note, Parsons says it pays to focus on one's own mechanisms.

"You can't predict other people's race," he says but mindful the others are probably thinking the same.

About 5000 athletes, including unknown overseas contenders, will converge here on what is believed to be a fast and furious flat course.

Enter Singaporean Jianyong Fang, 26, who ran the Gold Coast Marathon in 2h 38m and holds his country's indoor 800m record.

Says Dunedin-born Parsons, the 2014 Queenstown Marathon champion: "Gold Coast is flat so it's easy ... and I won on a hilly Queenstown course in 2:33."

Fair enough. Talk is cheap so let the highway project begin.