Athletics: Decision time for record breaker

Dunedin nurse Brooke Eddy faces a dilemma. She is to be married in October and must decide if it is worth spending $3000 to race in the world cross-country championships in Switzerland in March.

Eddy is engaged to former Australian international Allan Carmen, 33, a PhD physiology graduate, and would like to test herself in the international arena.

Athletics New Zealand used to pay the costs for athletes competing in major international events. But times have changed and self-funding is required to compete in most international events.

Eddy understands the practical difficulties and the cost of setting up her home and must weigh up her priorities.

Her immediate goal is to win the New Zealand 3000m title next month.

Eddy, 22, was a promising athlete when she was growing up in Gore, but has blossomed in the senior ranks since joining the Leith Club in Dunedin.

She demonstrated this by breaking the 13-year-old Otago senior women's 3000m record at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.

Eddy led from the start to win by 45 seconds in 9min 29.93sec. It was a personal best time by 15sec and won her the Caledonian Society of Otago Athlete of the Week award.

The significant point was to break the record of 9min 35.95sec that fellow Leith runner Deanna Grass ran in 1990.

Former international John Bowden, of Auckland, coaches her and they communicate by email and telephone.

Eddy said the key to her dramatic improvement had been the intensive two-hour speed work programme she did three times a week.

Bowden wanted Eddy to lap at 75 seconds but she found this too difficult into the steady easterly wind that blew up the front straight.

When she passed through four laps in 4min 56sec, Eddy had a lead of 35 seconds.

There was an intense contest behind her, with four runners contesting the minor placings.

Julia Scoones (Leith) was pitted against three triathletes and bided her time until the last 250m when she sprinted home to finish second in 10min 14.98sec and claim the women's under-18 title.

Fiona McKee (Hill City) had been dropped three laps out, but showed her tenacity to come back strongly to finish third in 10min 19.46sec.

Sarah Bryant (Leith), the pacemaker for the bunch, faded badly in the last lap and finished fourth in 19min 22.66sec but was second in the under-18 championship. Taryn McLeod (Hill City) was fifth in 10min 24.02sec and was third in the senior women's championship.

It was a remarkable effort by Scoones, a trainee nurse, who improved by a minute and narrowly missed breaking a 20-year-old Otago record.

She was just three-100ths of a second short of the Otago women's under-18 record of 10min 14.95sec that was set by Andrea Elvines (Alexandra) in 1983.