2007 Australian Mountain Running Championships - Report by Trevor Jacobs
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Unlike with Stuart Doyle, there was much less on the line for me and I could really just go out to enjoy the race and have a good time. I was nontheless keen as always though to do the best I can and try and get close to my time from 2 years ago. My time in the ACT champs was a bit slack as it was a bit over 70mins.
It was good to get there early and see the other races. The open womens was fascinating as they were bunched up going up the hill the 2nd time and it seemed like anybody's race. I was hoping that Vanessa wasn't suffering too much from the cold that she picked up a couple of days earlier. You are to be congratulated Vanessa for gutsing it out to the end and weren't far off the pace. Hubes must have "fanged" it back down to take out the Champs - what a victory! we're waiting for your detailed report Hubes!!
My goals were to try and stave off Dams (Damian Green) as he's been relentlessly tracking me down in races of late. He gave me the poops going up the first time cos he got ahead!! ARGH!!! was this the end for me?? Luckily I just managed to sneak back in front of him just before the top and then tried to get a gap going back down. Luckily this seemed to work and David Hosking passed him too. But Dams is good on the ups and he claws his way towards me on the second up, but not quite as close as before. Thankfully this remained the pattern for all three laps and I managed to hold off both Dams and Dave - phew!! But I can sense them coming - its only a matter of time!! arghh...
I'll add some race times below for the 4 races experienced over this course, for the records:
I'll put one after the other below these - 2005 ACT Champs, then 2005 Aus champs; then 2007 ACT Champs; and lastly the 2007 Aust Champs:
lap1 22.50; lap 2 22.44; lap 3 23.25 = total 69.24
lap 1 22.03; lap 2 22.08; lap 3 22.58 = total 67.10
lap 1 22.40; lap 2 23.18; lap 3 24.30 = total 70.29
lap 1 21.56; lap 2 22.47; lap 3 23.47 = total 68.30
So you can see that Dams pushed me to do a quick first lap which then paid a penalty on the next two laps compared with the other races. It was good though to go quite a bit faster (2 mins)(which is not as good as Stu's 4 min improvement tho of course) than the 2007 ACT Champs, and to get close to the 2005 Aus Champs time (by a bit over 1 min).
It was a great day - it was v good to see everybody out there and to see so many people running well and participating despite the cold. Actually the cold and the softened ground made conditions very good I reckon for the race.
Big thanks go to John Harding as his band of helpers ONCE AGAIN for everything that he and they do for Aus Mtn Running!!
cheers all
Trevor
PS. the old quads were very sore after the race, which also seemed to bring on a cold that I'd been nicely incubating for a few days beforehand, so I haven't been feeling very flash since the race, but hopefully will turn the corner soon :o) and will get back out there for more!!
