Athletics Essendon Race Report, Results and Photos.

Athletics Victoria XCR’18 Round 7 of 10.

Lake Wendouree, Ballarat 6km & 15km Road Race Championships.
Saturday 4 August 2018.

Our runners made the trek out to Ballarat for the longest drive to an XCR’18 race for the season.
The course consisted of an initial 1.5km x 2 = 3km loop and then two full 6km laps of the closed road around Lake Wendouree. The juniors completed one full 6km lap in their event.
Our athlete numbers were down, along with most other clubs, but for those who made the journey it was a very satisfying result individually and for our club teams.
The temperature wasn’t as cold as everyone had dreaded, it was even warm when the sun came out.
We had thirteen female runners, three of these were juniors.
And we had fourteen male runners, four of these were juniors
Athletics Essendon power couple, Charlotte Wilson and Liam Adams, led our 15km open women’s and open men’s team home.
Charlotte in her third top ten finish for the season, came home in third place, only bettered by her second place in the 8km at St. Anne’s Winery earlier in the XCR’18 season.
Liam in also his third top ten finish for the season, came home in seventh place, with his best finish for the season being third place at the 10km race at Albert Park last round.
In the open women’s team, all three team were filled by the ten runners, with Div 2 first, Div 4 fourth and Div 5 second in an outstanding team result. With some of the Div 2 top runners not racing, we had two of our Div 4 runners, Laura Paterson and Janet Daniels, step up to Div 2 and they both ensured that the team would win the day’s racing.
This was Janet’s first race back on the road since RFTK, she has been out tackling trail races across Victoria for the last few months and the trail strength that she has gained certainly showed on the roads at Ballarat.
First ever XCR top 20 finish for Liselle Atkin, this is Liselle’s second year at Athletics Essendon and she is now key member of our top group of open women distance runners, in especially these longer distance races.
And great to see all of Div 4 and Div 5 open women work together so well and support each other to ensure everyone finished and filled all three teams.
Thanks so much to the open women’s joint team manager Lisa Gunn, for all your work at Ballarat with the women runners.
The men’s results were a little underwhelming for the club teams. With just ten male runners racing and needing eleven to fill two teams, with Div 1 having all six places filled, sadly our Div 3 team was one runner short of the required team of five.
Great running by three of our 40+ male runners, Damien Bruneau, Jeff Jones & Mal Wellington, to step up to Div 1 and get the team home in ninth place and still beat home one other Div 1 team.
With our men’s teams not doing so well, individually our male athletes are excelling.
In the M40-44 category, Damien Bruneau was third and he was our second fastest runner on the day and he will remain in third place in his category in the XCR’18 six individual race standings.
And in the M45-49 category, Jeff Jones will remain a top ten runner with one more race to go, the Burnley 21km race.
And in the M60+ category, super distance runner / triathlete Karl Augustin, will move further up the top ten with his eight place in his category.
Similarly, in our junior club ranks our runner numbers were very well down, with no teams filled.
All juniors of all ages ran in the 6km event.
Fastest junior female on the day was Sienna Andrews and fastest junior male was Max Taylor.
Next XCR’18 race is round 8 at Anglesea, on Saturday 18 August, for the cross country team relays. With a six different distances to choose from, 4.6km up 9.8km, there will be a distance for everyone to choose from.
Team entries close with AV on Monday 13 August @ 11:59am, so contact your respective team manager before noon on Sunday 12 August if you would like to race and be placed in a relay team.
We are looking forward to a huge number of entries for this event, after so many runners skipped Ballarat, they will be refreshed and ready to hit the trails at Anglesea.
The club very generously will be paying your relay entry fees to AV for this event, so support you club and race for FREE in this event and help our club teams be promoted or to avoid relegation.

https://athleticsessendon.org.au/copy-of-18-08-06-ballarat-results/

Photos

Many thanks to Joanne McDowall Achkar from the Red and Black Running Team for the race day photos.