In the 1960s, 70s and 80s New Zealand always had top international distance athletes. These people were seen just about every day running around their local parks or at one of the athletics tracks. In each of these decades there were always New Zealanders featuring in overseas road races and our women led the way in international races with many major wins, world records and Olympic medals.

Today it seems that you have to go overseas to gain specialist training and competition. In the last 5 years there have been very few sub 30 minute 10km race results in New Zealand. In the 1980s these occurred almost weekly. Why has this happened when training methods have actually improved? With the right attitude, commitment and training Graeme Holden believes that New Zealand based athletes can perform to world class levels. Training is incrementally progressive. Any athlete running the same times as last year or even last month should look critically at their past 3-6 months and analyse where they have improved. How was it specific to the event they were planning and why didn’t it correlate to improved performance?