Hunter heads pack in Rupanyup
After long, hard days of digging, lifting, hauling and shifting, Stawell landscaper David Hunter finds it difficult to find the motivation to get out and run.
He trains for perhaps ‘one or two days a week’ but that was enough to have him primed for Stawell Amateur Athletic Club’s eight-kilometre handicap at Rupanyup.
Hunter won from cheerful veteran Terry Jenkins and improving rookie Rebecca Hurley who both got closer than he thought.
Hunter knows he has to get off his tail if he is going to be fit for the Melbourne Marathon in October, an endeavour for which he lacks no motivation.
“I love that weekend in Melbourne. It’s a great atmosphere being with people with the same intent to do the best they can. And to finish the marathon on the MCG, that really gets the adrenalin pumping,” he said.
Eventually, Hunter will build up to the minimum of running 50 kilometres a week if he is to be fully fit to achieve his goal of bettering the four hours he’s managed.
“To be honest, I think I run best when I am fresh, but to run a marathon you have to have the kilometres in your legs,” he said.
“I actually think of the marathon as a relaxed jog for about 35-kilometres, but a hard slog for the last seven or eight kilometres.”
In a keenly-contested sub-junior one-kilometre scamper, Hunter’s girls Chloe and Olivia did their best to emulate dad, but a determined Charlie Dunn held on to win by just six seconds.
The club returns to home turf for an eight-kilometre handicap in Stawell on Saturday.
Jack wins mates race
Stawell and Ararat Cross Country Club legend Jack Trounson is proud to be one of the fortunate few 71-year-olds who is not on any long-term medication.
The one exception – painkillers – is a temporary necessity to arrest the torment of a troublesome ankle which is fused together with metal screws, the legacy of a schoolboy accident unrelated to sport.
Running with relative freedom on Sunday, Trounson ended a long sequence of seconds, thirds and fourths to win his second Peter Gibson eight-kilometre handicap.
Surging to the lead with two kilometres to run, Trounson forced the pace, acutely aware of the one danger, Chris Barwick, who gave eight minutes start to the veteran, but was closing in fast.
“If he’d caught me, I wouldn’t have been able to go with him, because I had nothing left,” Trounson said.
But in the end, Barwick’s handicap was too great to overcome, with the winner holding a 1.47-minute margin and third-placed Sandra Barwick backing up last week’s win by chasing her husband home.
In horse-racing terms, Trounson was a long odds-on favourite to win a race that is special to him. The sponsor is a training and travel companion and for many years with the club they have been together for pre-race and post-race warm-ups and warm-downs.
In the five years running of the Gibson, on what has been described as the ‘perfect’ cross-country course at Ararat’s Dunneworthy Common, Trounson has never finished further back than third.
Gibson paid tribute to his training partner at the post-race presentation before Trounson clarified the situation.
“I’ve been training solo from five o’clock in the morning. We haven’t trained together for months,” he said.
That was due to Gibson being burdened by his own injury, a badly bruised foot as a result of a land-clearing mishap.
Trounson’s woes mean that he now trains four days a week instead of five.
“I still have the fitness but not the stamina,” he lamented.
This Sunday, the club meets at the Ararat Harness Racing circuit for a 10-kilometre Blizzard Family Championship.