Col Barnett, one of the Stawell Amateur Athletic Club’s most decorated runners, recorded one of the most satisfying wins of his long career in the 10 kilometre Run for Ray at Stawell last Saturday.
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“I’m the best I’ve been for five years, I’m running a minute quicker than I did last year and I’m enjoying my running,” the 54-year-old said.
Barnett has started in every race on the club’s 2017 calendar, something he has not been able to achieve for some years due to a succession of niggling injuries.
“The key has been not to train as hard as I have in the past. I was down to just 20 kilometres a week and having plenty of rest. I’ve built that up to 30 only because I’m race fit and running with more confidence,” he said.
The race is held in memory of Ray Scott, a past president of the club.
Improving youngster Miles Membrey enjoyed a muddy jaunt in the sub junior race to defeat Olivia Hunter and Kayla Membrey in the one-kilometre dash.
Perennial achiever Jack Trounson runs with metal screws in both ankles, the legacy of an accident not related to running, but he has never rested long enough to go rusty.
The veteran of a record 631 runs with the Stawell and Ararat Cross Country Club, Trounson reached yet another milestone when posting his 30th win in his 40th year with the club in the 6.5-kilometre Watkins Family Handicap at Warrak on Sunday.
It’s a demanding slog, with steep climbs, daunting downhills and a tricky trek across a sloping paddock that tests the sturdiest ankles.
But few 69-year-olds are tougher than Trounson who, in relative terms, has twice circled the globe in a lifetime of 90,000 training kilometres and over 4000 racing.
On a recent holiday to Hervey Bay, Trounson defied heat and humidity with hour long runs on most days and on an earlier adventure in May, on the fringe of Australia’s Simpson Desert, he recorded hothouse runs at Lake Eyre and Dalhousie Springs.
“The alternative to running an hour a day is stopping,” he said, “and I can’t do that.”
So, no wonder he was too tough in the Watkins, always in command and powering to a 0.33 minute win over two of the club’s elite, Peter Gibson and Simon Gallagher.
Trounson had won this race before back in 2006, not of course when the race was a “flat as a tack” run from the Warrak hamlet, but now when its idiosyncrasies tests the mettle of the weak, and the willing.
The club has a bye this weekend before the King of the Hill, a challenging three-kilometre climb to the top of Ararat’s forbidding One Tree Hill.
