Smash ends football dream but marathon goal remains in sight

Alison King | 4th June 2010

It was a career-ending motorbike crash but former Rotorua Boys' High School footballer Jon Carpenter has turned the tables to excel in another field and has his sights set on donning a silver fern.

The 30-year-old former prefect is now a top endurance runner, finishing third in the Leiden Marathon in the Netherlands with a personal best time of 2 hours 28 minutes and 7 seconds.

He now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is a fitness, health and well-being instructor and runs along the seafront or city canal instead of his Rotorua favourite Redwoods or Ngongotaha tracks.

Carpenter said his ambitions at school were to progress from the 1st XI into a national league club.

He'd got as far as playing representative football for Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty when the wheels came off in 1995.

The motorbike crash at the top of Sunset Rd resulted in multiple fractures in his arm, a fractured kneecap, broken ribs and clavicle and took him out of contact sport for a year.

"I always ran to keep fit for whatever sport I was playing but did not particularly enjoy it as it was the team aspect of sport I liked.

"I guess as I grew older and began to enjoy my own company a lot more, I got more into it.

"When I left New Zealand and started travelling, running became the main activity. Running is easy. All you need is a pair of shoes and a map of the foreign city you're running around."

Since living in Edinburgh he's got more serious about running, instead of using it as a means of sightseeing and exercising at the same time.

In April he won his first half marathon, the Heaven and Hell race in Perthshire, Scotland. He took third place in the Edinburgh Half Marathon and a month ago second, at the fiercely-contested Edinburgh to North Berwick 32km road race but it was his third, at Leiden on May 16, that remains a career highlight to date.

"I had set a target of sub 2hrs 30mins for Leiden and trained harder than ever before in the 12 weeks leading up to it.

"Training twice a day is not easy with a demanding 50-hour-plus working week and a relationship to sustain with my very supportive and patient fiancee.

"Performance at work suffered and marathon training puts a strain on relationships - I wouldn't want to be woken every day at 5am or want to have a conversation with someone that had just finished a 178km week of running. I was drained.

"Friends became a little worried as I dropped to 61kg losing 7kg in three months. It was all worth it as I chased down second place and crossed that line two minutes under my goal.

"It was amazing. I sat down and had a wee emotional moment. Best day of my life!"

 He's planning on running a few more half marathons before focusing on the Berlin Marathon in October, where in 2008 he was able to line up beside his running idol Haile Gebrselassie.

He runs for the enjoyment but also to challenge his body.

"I would love to run at Glasgow 2014 [in the Commonwealth Games]. I need to take over 10 minutes off my marathon time which is massive but not totally impossible given I have four years to peak.

"Every Kiwi wants to put that black singlet on at least once in their life. There would be no greater feeling."