The Puma Spectacle festival of running this weekend is an opportunity to celebrate our region being recognised by Sports NZ as the most active in the country. Their surveys in 2024 and 2025 show we do more hours per week of exercise and recreation.
This event, in its second year, brings together world-class athletes, endurance runners, amateur joggers, walkers and children. It starts on Friday with the 100 mile, 100km, 10km Relay and 10km Trail, and then on Saturday with the 50km, 22km, 5km Kids and Junior Mile, Relay Races, Open Mile and Elite Mile.
My favourites are on Saturday with the Kids Mile at 4pm, attracting more than 200 entries, and the Elite Mile at 8pm that includes some of the fastest milers on the planet like New Zealand’s Sam Tanner and Kenyan Festus Lagat and Australians Sarah Billings, Georgia Griffith and Sophie O’Sullivan.
We are a natural home for this national running festival with our sunny climate, beautiful scenery and stunning network of back country trails so close to the city. We have a rich heritage of Olympian runners including Harold Nelson (1948), Rod Dixon (1972, 1976), Toni Hodgkinson (1996, 2000), Julian Matthews (2016) and Paralympian Liam Malone (2016).
The proud Nelsonians and runners behind this event are founders Julian Matthews (1500m Olympian), Annika Pfitzinger (middle distance) and Michael Cochrane (Ultra Marathon runner) supported by event manager and local adventure legend Nathan Fa’avae.
I’m participating in the 10km Relay with the team of Nelsonians I did the New York Marathon with in 2023. It includes Nelson Weekly Managing Director Andrew Board and Sports Tasman Chief Executive Ed Shuttleworth who recently completed the 210km Reasons to Run for Hospice. Andrew and Ed’s sons, both called Hugo, have also teamed up with friends to enter the 10km relay, making it a fun inter-generational contest.
This year’s Spectacle has attracted 250 more runners than last year, with a total of 1740 entrants, and it has gained the backing of Air New Zealand alongside Puma, Matthews Eyecare and Kiwibank. The festival is centred around the top of Trafalgar Street and the Church Steps with the Black Seeds band turning it into a party night from 9pm. Come join the action.
