Melbourne University Athletics Club

MUAC chills out at Albert Park

Round 6 XCR’17: Albert Park Road Race

A flotilla of MUAC athletes sailed around Albert Park Lake on Sunday morning, ignoring the cool air and rising winds to run some impressive races, claim two medals and some valuable premiership points.

Ciara Boyd-Squires Long moved onto the podium after a couple of fourth places, taking 3rd in the U20 Women’s 3km race leading home team mates Sarah Lloyd and Emily French to another team win, and inching closer to confirming their premiership victory.

The 10km marquee event, the deepest in Australia by some margin with 370+ athletes breaking 40 minutes, saw an intriguing battle in the lead pack with MUAC’s Charlie Park and Nick Earl in the thick of it. The two reaches back north saw growing headwinds, and on the second lap Park attacked, distancing Earl and forming a lead group with Liam Adams, Mitch Brown and Chris Hamer, all Australian representatives. The brave move saw Park swamped by the three in the last kilometre but garnered him a bronze medal, his first in Open Victorian competition. The Premier team (Park, Earl, Newman, Conway, O’Neill, and Powell) look to have tied with St Stephen’s for second place on points in provisional results but would win the tie break to score second place. MUAC’s Premier Women packed well with the top three, Maddy Button, Lisa Dick and Ruby Turner all finishing within 30 seconds of each other. There were some big PBs, perhaps none bigger than Jack Hughes’ 10 minute plus effort to run 36:37 (boundary umpiring is clearly paying off). There were strong team results throughout the divisions with the Open Men particularly pleasing: Division 2, 7th, Division 3, 3rd, Division 5, 4th.

MUAC athletes repaired to the Carousel Cafe post race for brunch, coffee and team results calculations.

Results

The MUAC team will be back in action on Saturday 29th July for Round 7 of XCR17, the Lake Wendouree Road Race.