XCR Round 10 Tan Relays - Sat 20 Sep
Yesterday was our final race of the season, and the Tan Track was looking awesome. The sun was out and no sign of the potential rain.
Waverley had 5 teams and welcomed new recruit Jack Beasley, our youngest runner about to turn 14, and under the talented stable of coach Neil Hutchins.
From the newest to our longest serving athlete, Michael Harvey celebrated 50 seasons with Waverley and shared a scrap book of some of his results. Harvs placed 11th in the 50k walk at the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles. He has also won 4 national 50k walk titles and competed at three World Championships and ten Race walking World Cups. He has 50k race walk pb of 3:57 (which sounds a pretty decent time even for running a marathon). Harvs retired from walking in 2000, and has run in every XCR season for Waverley since then. He also has a marathon pb of 2:52 and has competed in nearly 30 marathons, mostly close to the 3 hour mark. Congratulations Harvs.
Back to the Tan Relays, we had a pretty strong Mens 50+ team, who had already won the season before the last event. Box Hill had an even better team, pulling out John Meagher who had to run the fastest ever tan lap by a 60 year old (13:35) to beat us, and we finished 2nd, with pretty similar times from our 3 stars: House, Davin and Martin.
Our womens 50+ team was filled at the last minute by Wendy who kindly offered to do a lap in the middle of her long training run. She’s already run 12k before starting. But paired with Niamh who won her age group for the season, and Nickie who ran a startlingly good time only 2 weeks after hurting her hamstring at Burnley, our Waverley women pulled out an extraordinary gold medal, 1st out of 7 teams. Well done ladies.
Our Mens Div 4 team did ok in a strong field, but a highlight was Jack’s debut with a sizzling 13:54, our second fastest time. Not bad for a 13 year old. Daniel and Matt also ran great pb’s.
Our Mens Div 5 team were competitive, with great runs by Peter Kormendy (also back from a recent hamstring strain), and Michael Jansen, who importantly took the kudos this time in the season battle with Nick, Michael Jansen and Harvs. Final standings Harvs 4, Smurf 3, Nick 1 and Jansen 2.
Our Womens Div 3 team were 5th, with a pb by Beck, pulling away even further in our Winter Club Trophy to a landslide win. It was great to see Maddie back and running well, and thanks to Em and Janice for filling our team with injury challenges.
So a great finish to the season with a gold and a silver team medal. Congratulations also to Mens 50+ for winning the season, Niamh for winning her age group individually, and Davin and Smoothy for 2nd and 3rd in their age groups for the season.
Our Waverley results are attached, and full tan results are at:
https://athsvic.resultshub.com.au/#
