Weston Creek Athletics Club ACT

Sunday, 14 March 2004

Sunday saw the annual running of the Weston Creek Half Marathon for the 19th year. This event is normally quite popular with runners of all abilities, as it is a great lead up race before the Canberra Marathon, which is on in just under a months time.

This year, the field wasn’t as strong as in previous years, except for the few front runners. Atlanta and Sydney Olympian Shaun Creighton (who only ran the first 7-8km hard then took it easy as he has a big 8km race coming up), former Australian Half marathon champion and 2003 ACT Cross Country Champion, Scott Westcott, and former Canberra Half marathon Champion, Martin Dent all took part.

Near perfect conditions greeted runners yesterday morning at 7:30am (7am for the early runners), as Ken Eynon started the race. It wasn’t too long till the first four broke away from the rest of the field. One of the spectacular sites of the race was being surrounded by hot air balloons as they landing next to the bike path on Yarramundi Reach (at the old museum site). It was a great sight to see.

The course record was smashed by 23secs, by Scott Westcott, who is on target for a great London Marathon in a months time. Westcott, who runs for NSW, but is based here in Canberra ran an impressive 65 flat for the tough half marathon course, creating a new course record beating Gemechu Woychea’s (winner of the last 3 Canberra Marathons) 2003 time. Weston Creek’s elite athlete and training partner with Westcott, Martin Dent, came in second in an impressive time of 65:57. North Canberra-Gungahlin athlete, Erwin McRae was third in 69:53. Dent and McRae will be battling it out, with Woychea, in the up and coming Canberra Marathon. Steve Bradford from Woden Harriers ran a impressive race, after going out pretty hard for the first half of the race, basically running the whole race by himself. Bradford was fourth in 80:06.

In the womens, it was Kerri Vaughan who took the honours. Vaughan was 36th overall in the race, clocking 93:48. Second in the womens, and less than 20secs behind was Shelly Foster. Foster ran 94:03. Third place was Weston Creek’s Christine Pauling, who was further 20secs behind in 94:26.

Weston Creek’s Ken Eynon and wife Marianne, who’ve managed most of the Weston Creek half marathons, did another wonderful job, even more so this year as there weren’t as many helpers available. So, on behalf of the Weston Creek

Athletic Club Committee, and all runners who took part in Sunday’s run, I would like to thank Ken and his wife and all the other volunteers who helped, for the tremendous effort they put it on Sunday. Well done.

The full results of the half marathon, including team and relay teams results are provided here, courtesy of Mick Corlis.

Thank you

Scott Imhoff

(Club Captain)