XCR Round 6 Ballarat - Sat 12 Jul
We had surprisingly warm conditions for Ballarat (for the early afternoon anyway), no wind and a flat fast course. There were a couple of minor obstacles set out, but the mud patch was dry and firm, you could easily go around the logs and you didn’t need to break stride to get over the narrow ditch. So a much easier course than Bundoora.
Illnesses to Wendy, Davin and James McEniry depleted our team a little, but it seemed that all teams were down in numbers (except maybe the Ballarat teams). First away was Harvs in the open short 6K course. He did that as a a warm up before the 10K to get his total distance up to the traditional 16K. Then Matt was off in the U20 8K. Unfortunately he rolled his ankle early in the last lap and couldn’t finish. Hope it recovers well Matt and you can get back to that good pre-season form again.
Then we had the womens 10K. Beck ran well – her best place for the season and 45th. Niamh, Janice and Petra all did well, to finish an impressive 2nd in Womens Div 3 and 4th in Womens 50+. Well done ladies.
In the mens event, Smoothy ran a blinder in 37:15 to finish 2nd in his age group behind Magnus. There was hardly anything between Julian and Martin. After finishing within a second of each other at Hanging Rock, this time the margin was still only 3 seconds, with Julian finishing just ahead, and turning the tables on the Hanging Rock result.
But even closer were Smurf and Nick. Nick went past Smurf early on, then the Smurf plugged away and caught him within the last 50m, but Nicholas revived and went past him, only for the Smurf to let loose a huge final sprint and nail the birthday boy on the line. For those of us who stayed up to watch Jonathan Milan win Stage 8 of the Tour de France later that night by the slimmest of margins, it was just like that. Whilst Smurf didn’t know it was Nick’s birthday until later, he says it wouldn’t have changed anything, he still would have thrown everything at him to the line.
Our Mens Div 4 team finished 3rd, and our Mens Div 5 team finished 4th. But our best result of the day was our Mens 50+ team finishing 2nd just behind Box Hill. We’ve now won 3 each, but we’ve always finished in the top 2, whilst they’ve been as low as 6th. so we lead progressively by 7 points.
Our results at Ballarat:
Female Open
10km: Rebecca Kirkham 41:18 ; Niamh O’Reilly 48:20; Janice Marston 50:42; Petra Spiteri 1:02:23;
Male Open
10km: David Venour 37:15; Julian Russell 39:29; Martin Spiteri 39:33; Ernest Lim 42:56; James Atkinson 44:19; Ewen Vowels 46:26; Nicholas Spiteri 46:27; Michael Jansen 50:17; Michael Harvey 54:31;
Men Div 4: 3rd, Men Div 5: 4th, Men 50+ 2nd, Women Div 3: 2nd, Women 50+: 4th
A great set of results.
The fastest times were Ed Marks (GHY) 29:23 (an amazing 10k cross country time), Katherine Downie (BAR) 35:13. Also impressive was Steve Moneghetti 35:11 to win Mens 60+.
Full results are at: https://athsvic.resultshub.com.au/#
