The Box Hill men’s Division 1 team had the most successful day for the season at the Coliban Relays from Harcourt to Bendigo to finish in third place behind the strong Glenhuntly and Doncaster teams.
Graeme Olden ran the first leg in Division 1 and struggled up the hill in 6th place, well behind Geelong and Glenhuntly and about a minute behind Doncaster, Malvern and Peninsula Road Runners. Hamish McElwee ran very strongly up the hill to the top of Mt Alexander to pass the Malvern and Peninsula Road Runner athletes and hold about a minute gap to Sean Quilty from Doncaster, with a similar margin to Glenhuntly and Geelong in first and second. Hamish won the Western Australian 10 km Road Racing Championship last weekend in Perth and had still had sore calves so was unable to run as fast on the downhill and lost about 30 s to Quilty but still ran under 29 minutes which is a fine run fro this leg. Marcus Tierney also ran strongly on the long third leg to catch and pass Geelong and lift us into third position, but lost some ground to Peter Hulbert from Glenhuntly and Dean Paulin from Doncaster ahead of us. From here on the places were unchanged and the gaps between each of the teams gradually widened with Adrian Vincent, Paul Boxshall and John Meagher all running strong legs to pull away from the Geelong runners behind, but also losing ground to Glenhuntly and Doncaster in front of us. Chris Bunney ran the last leg into Bendigo and although he lost over 2 minutes to Mark Tucker from Geelong, we finished well over 2 minutes in front of Geelong to claim the bronze medal.
The Division 3 team of David Ayers, Luke Vipond, Adam Pepper, Chris O’Connor and David Boyd all ran solid legs to bring the team home in 6th place.
Unfortunately, the women’s teams were decimated by withdrawals and Rachel Johnson was the only runner who made it to Harcourt which meant that we were not able to field a full team.