XCR 26 Round 9 Burnley

This year, with the Half Marathon at Ballarat, it was a scaled back Burnley to 15km, which I think, having done a few halfs here, would have been a positive change! Our numbers were low this round, especially with the open men and juniors, but it looks like we’ve done enough through the season to hold our ladder positions.

It has been a very successful season for many athletes and, with this race being the final individual race, we have many athletes finishing in the top ten of the Champion Athlete rankings and two junior athletes winning; Leanne Ellis in the women’s U20 and Ryder Deans in the Men’s U16.

Open Women

Our open women numbers have held up well this year with 10 this round and resulting in two full teams and one in the Div 4. Our Premier team did well finishing 5th and again Ebony Dodemaide put in a big race finishing first for the team and in 7th overall, in a time of 55 minutes and 34 seconds. Not far behind and in 12th overall was Maddi Button. Then Amy Cashin, the 3rd athlete in the top twenty, with Claire Hodgart and Sophie McMinimee rounding out the team. The Div 2 and 4 had solid results both finishing 5th.

In the short course, Carolyn Huell was 2nd in the 50+ and Janice Hodgart was 2nd in the 60+.

In the Ladders, it looks like our Premier with stay in 4th place behind South Melbourne.

Open Men

With very low numbers this round we only had a Premier team and 3 in the Div 3. But luckily for us, Bendigo region had even fewer, just one! The Premier team finished in 9th and BER was 10th which meant we retained 2nd place in the ladder. It was, however, a great run for Liam Cashin who finished 2nd overall in a PB time of 45 minutes and 42 seconds. Second in was Brandon Muscat with Zayd Al Sayd in third. Then a big gap, with Nick Tavendale in his debut for the Premier team, Dylan Brandie 5th and Chris Chambers rounding out the team, also in his debut for the team. The Div 3 team, with only 3 athletes was 14th.

Juniors

There was only a small contingent of juniors but the results were still strong with Leanne Ellis winning her U20 4km race, in a time of 13 minutes and 3 seconds, and taking out the XCR U20 Champion athlete and Ryder Deans finishing 2nd in the U16 and also taking out the XCR U16 Champion athlete. In the Men’s U20 the team of Aiden Muscat, Mitch Parks and Riley Parks were second and, in the Men’s U16, the team of Ryder Deans and Zac Salerno were first.