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Why Olympic?

Finish line

Olympic Harriers is a running and walking club based in Johnsonville, in the northern suburbs of Wellington. We cater for all levels of the sport, from social running and walking through to competitive harriers (cross country and road) and athletics (track and field), and we cater for all ages, from the five year old juniors through to seniors and masters. In summer we have one of Wellington’s strongest children’s athletics groups for primary to intermediate school-aged kids.

Some people in the sport are competitive, and compete at the regional, national or international level. Children may want to improve their running, jumping and throwing skills; others may want to get fit for other sports. For the adults, it’s often about getting fit and having someone to walk or run with, to improve 5km fun run times or half marathon times. Others want support in achieving a full marathon.

Whatever you want to achieve, Olympic can help. Running — the sport where you set the fitness level you and and you set your fitness level.

What we do

Our main season is the cross country and road (harriers) season, which runs over winter from April to October on Saturday afternoons. During this time we follow our own syllabus that consists of club runs, club races and inter-club races (see the calendar). We have activities for all ages, from seniors and masters and juniors down to five years old.

During the track and field (athletics) season (October to March) we participate in the Athletics Wellington syllabus, or if that’s not your thing we have summer club runs each week. Children aged from 5 to 14 can participate in our children’s athletics programme.

Club runs are social runs where we split into different packs so everyone gets to run with others of similar ability. They are normally based at our clubrooms but in summer they move around for a bit of variety.

Club cross country crossing

We also run our own club events, most of which have lots of tradition and date back to the early days of the club in the early 1900s. We are one of the few clubs in the country to still hold traditional cross-country races which are full of mud, stream crossings, jumps and hills — which the kids in particular love.

We are affiliated to Athletics New Zealand, and encourage participation in the national and local (inter-club) harriers and athletics events.

During the week there is specific fitness and speed training, if you wish.

We place a strong emphasis on coaching and junior development, and hold organised coaching/training sessions each Tuesday night, run by the club’s accredited coach. See the coaching page for more details of our coaching programmes.

More details of what we do are on our activities page.

Children’s athletics is held on Monday evenings over summer, with interclub events usually on Sundays. See our children’s athletics information for more details.

Why Olympic?

We offer our members:


 

NRR 2011, JW

Last updated: 27 May 2018