Sunday 20 March 2005

Racing and the Vets 5000m Championships

Posted by Ewen on Sunday, March 20, 2005 with
A number of medals were handed out at Kowen Forest this morning for the 5000m Track Championships held on Thursday night at the AIS. Over half the runners who competed on Thursday were from ‘Team Moore’ so it was quite a list. Here we go:

M40 – 2nd Colin Farlow 17:29. M45 – 4th John Morton 20:13, 6th Ewen Thompson 21:03. M55 – 2nd Geoff Moore 19:49. M60 – 2nd Graeme Small 24:32. M65 – 1st Tony Booth 21:41.
W35 – 1st Amanda Walker 22:30, 2nd Lisa Wilson 22:57. W45 – 1st Kathy Southgate 18:40 (ACT rec), 2nd Helen Lamour 22:26. W50 – 1st Maria O’Reilly, 20:25, 2nd Kathy Sims 22:14, 3rd Cathy Montalto 22:19, 4th Charmaine Knobel 23:30. W55 – 1st Margaret McSpadden 25:55.

The presentation of awards for the Track and Field season was held shortly after the finish of the 5000m. One of the awards was for ‘The Pennington’. For interstate or international readers of this blog, ‘The Pennington’ is a series of races designed to find the best middle-distance runner in the club. The races are handicaps where you start according to age and sex based on ‘world best’ performances. If the best middle-distance runners in the world competed they all would finish in a tie – the W35 runner would tie with the M55, the W70 and so on.

For 2004/05 the winner of ‘The Pennington’ (and therefore, the best middle distance runner in the club) was Colin Farlow. He actually tied on points with John Morton but won because the rules state that in the event of a tie the winner is the youngest runner.

At the presentation John spoke at length about his great rivalry with Colin. They had trained together and knew intimately each other’s strengths and weaknesses. One race stood out in John’s mind. It was a 1500m event where they both shared the work for the first 3 laps in order to achieve a fast time. After that it would be a race to the finish. They were together with 200m to go and ran shoulder to shoulder around the bend and into the straight. First one then the other would edge a slight lead. They sprinted side by side to the finish with Colin out-leaning John to claim victory. John said this was his most memorable race ever and it defined what racing meant to him.