Normally you only gather at the cemetery to pay your respects and arrange a swap of a briefcase with someone suspicious behind a headstone, but today we met for some running, mostly in the freezing cold. The 6.2k Carr Villa course is deceptively challenging, but today it was Ricky Barnewall day as he smashed the field to win convincingly. His pace of 3:29/km was electric. Ricky has been struggling with a few setbacks and his pace had ballooned out near 3:50/km at one stage the poor thing, but it was good to see him at his best and two of his boys were able to hold the ribbon for Dad, and claim the prize money. In second place was Daniel Van Der Vlist who is getting faster and faster every week and in third place was Sam Wierenga with a fantastic run, it has been great to see Sam back running with the club and now hitting the podium.
The fastest male today was Ricky Barnewall, leaving his run for male club champion a bit late, and the fastest female was Sarah Menzie and that is a tight race for female club champion, makes things very interesting. We had a couple of Juniors race today and special mention to Joseph Sepek, who was our fastest junior runner by almost 3 minutes, exceptional running from the run man.
Division Two was won by Colin Smith, who has had covid, broken bones, fallen off bikes, gotten sick, got stuck going for Collingwood and basically suffered a lot, but today he was able to win on the difficult course, well done. In second place was fast finishing Swanah Tarrawally and a photo finish for third, with Benjamin Carter just edging out Lindy Alps. Our fastest junior male was Charlie Reese, who impressively was the fastest of all runners in the race. The fastest junior female was Jada Rowlings. The most pre race yawns of about 75 in total went to Cameron Slocombe, maybe he came straight from the pub to the race.
In Division Three it was the backmarkers day as they all stormed home together, it was tight but first place went to Alexander Murray, followed by Flynn Murray and Marcus Finearty. The fastest male was Flynn Murray and fastest female was Olive Howard. Well done to all the kids , think it was about 1 degree when they ran.
Full results available here.
Thanks to our wonderful sponsor Eye Spy, who not only supported todays race but are also the junior sponsor, and their logo is on the kids tops this year. Thank you to all our volunteers you are all wonderful, special mention to Anna Peterson who is not even running but came out to marshal today, thank you all.
Next week is the half marathon, meeting at the same spot as race one, at heritage forest. Tim Reese has marked the course and maps will be up on facebook this week. Tim is going around the course tomorrow at 10am for anyone interested in running behind his bike to see the course. Our Div 2 and 3 courses will also be new.
All runners in all divisions will get a medal as part of the day.
This race in all divisions will be a sealed handicap, we will all start together and race, and handicaps applied afterwards. Entries on the website in the usual spot. The sponsor for the half is Intas Insurance
