Ultra marathon man Butcher still to decide

Ace Masterton endurance runner Graeme Butcher is still to decide whether he will contest the national ultra marathon 100km championships at Taupo about the middle of next month.
Butcher was delighted with his win in a 60km event staged by the Hutt Valley-based Aurora Harrier Club last weekend as it showed he was recovering well from the leg injury which stopped him from representing New Zealand at the world 100km championships in Italy last October.
But Butcher also knows that stepping up from 60km to 100km after not getting back into serious training mode until mid-December is a formidable challenge and he has yet to convince himself he will ready for that in just a matter of a few more weeks.
"Taupo is on the mind but no more than that, we'll just have to wait and see," he said.
The course covered by the 17 competitors one of whom was from Australia in last weekend's 60km race started on the Western Lake Road at Cross Creek and took the runners over the incline track to Kaitoke and through the Tunnel Gully forest to Maymorn.
Then it was back to Te Marua and onto the finish at the Petone foreshore by following the Hutt river through Akatarawa.
Butcher took the lead from the outset with the intention of maintaining a comfortable pace all the way.
A strong head wind, which had him down to a virtual walk at times, and the uphill nature of the incline track did, however, make it rather slow going for the first 10km which he completed in 54mins.
Weather conditions did, however, improve once the tunnels were behind the runners; the tunnels being so dark torches had to be used to help the negotiation process.
Indeed temperatures reached into the near 20s from that point on.
For the first 30km Butcher did not actually see any of his rivals, reaching there in 2hrs 30mins and feeling strong enough to think he may be able to break the 5hr barrier.
Not long afterwards though he became aware of Wellington 's Graeme Lear closing in on him.
He upped the pace slightly to try and shake him off but Lear kept coming and joined Butcher in the lead at about the 43km mark.
For the next few kilometres the two were neck and neck with the tempo being increased to half marathon rather than ultra marathon pace, something shown by the fact the 5km stretch between the 45km and 50km points took just over 20mins to complete.
"I was really struggling to stay with him (Lear).
"I knew I couldn't survive that sort of pace all the way to the finish," Butcher recalled.
So he decided to be patient and allow Lear to take a clear lead with the idea of following closely enough behind to take advantage of any tiredness he showed over the closing stages.
It was a tactic which worked to perfection with Lear "cracking" at around the 50km mark and Butcher again assuming command, running the last 10km in only 46mins (8mins quicker than the first 10km) to win in the excellent time of 4hrs 45mins.
Lear was second all of 10mins in arrears.