For such a big club, it was disappointing that we didn’t field more teams in the relay championships.

However, Quality over Quantity also works.

4 x Distance medley

Daniel Rees, Danny Hawsworth, Ryan Rodriguez and Bouchaib Chefnaoui took gold in the men’s 40+ event, while Izzy Geradi, Caroline Higham, Anna Kasapis and Maddy Caulfield also won gold in womens open.

Our relay success was underpinned by our strong 40+ runners.

Mark Harper, Brett Maurer, Mark Giglio and Troy Jardine took gold in the 4 x 100 in 48.68 sec, despite some rusty baton changes; they also won the 4 x 400 in 3:53.60. They were in 2^nd spot until the 3^rd leg when Troy worked his way to the lead, handing to Brett who left the opposition in his wake!

We also had a team in the women’s open sprint medley, which consisted of 2 x 200, 1 x 400 and a final leg of 800m. The team of Kiyani Sydnor, Jo Margiolis, Mel Foster and Ali Rogers came 7^th overall.

The men’s sprint medley also tried hard but were undermanned with Mark Harper, Marco Spagnolo, Jannik Ernst and Christian Knox being out run by their stronger opponents.

Apart from the relay championships there were a number of top athletes in action at Lakeside as part of the Zátopek:10.

Montana Djatschenko was third in the long jump with 5.56m, Zara Keca fourth with 5.35m while it was great to see Benan Oztorun back and jumping well after an horrendous knee injury two years ago. His jump of 7.14m placed him 3^rd.

Matthew Hosie continues to do well in the pole vault with an impressive 4.75m.

Archie Noakes finished 4^th in the Under 20 3000m in 8:28.4, just 18 sec outside his club record.

In the Blue Riband event – Australian 10K champs, our multiple Olympian, Liam Adams showed the benefit of a couple of tours of Falls Creek to finish third in 10,000m in a time of 28:46.35….that’s an average of 17.3 sec per 100m! His time was just 36 sec off his club record, set 10 years ago.