2009/10 Victorian Milers Club - Meet 1
Olympic Park - Thursday, 26 November 2009

The first of the Victorian Milers Club meets for the season was held at Olympic Park in humid conditions with tropical storms having swept through the track earlier that evening. The meet consisted of a series of graded 800 metre races with the Victorian 5000 m Championships to follow. The Coburg Harriers had David Woods and Glenn Carroll in the 800 m heats with Jeremy Grey  and Liam Magee in the 5000 m section. In the case of Magee, he would contest the Victorian Championship event with Grey in the C Heat

First up was Glenn Carroll in heat 7 of the 800 m. With much of the field going through in sub 60 seconds, Carroll was well placed to make an assault on the leading pack hitting the bell in 61 seconds. In a blanket finish, Carroll crossed the line in sixth place with 2:05.24, less than 0.75 of a second from third place. Interestingly, the sole female of the nine men's heats was one place behind Glenn with the second fastest time in Australia this year by a woman in a mixed race. In Heat 8 the Benny Tancredi trained David Woods was placed beautifully at the bell going through in 62 seconds and just sitting off the lead. In a frantic finish, Woods was able to out-kick several rivals and almost catch a few more as he crossed in fourth place with 2:07.19, less than a quarter of a second form the runner up

The first of four graded 5000 m heats featured Jeremy Grey in the C race. Two runners were setting the early pace with a large park forming just off the leaders. Grey placed himself at the rear of this pack to take advantage of the large group working in together. As the race progressed, Grey's lap rating increased, moving steadily through the eighteen strong field until a last lap kick saw Grey cross the line in second place with 16:38.68 and his best performance over the distance in almost three seasons

The last race of the night was the Victorian Championship event of the 5000 m. Liam Magee went into this event with a 15:28 recorded at Coburg some two weeks ago. With a game plan in mind of sitting on three minute kilometres through the first 3,000 metres, Magee lined up at the start with the cream of Victorian distance running. Everything was going to plan, with consistent 71 second laps seeing Magee through three kilometres in 8:57. Such a terrific pace did begin to tell but to record 3:05 for each of the next two kilometres was a remarkable effort and Magee crossed the line with 15:08.55 and sixteenth Victorian home. Fantastic effort and Magee's second quickest lifetime 5 km result and is now the club record for 35 - 39 men beating a near 30 year record. This will take some beating!

Also well done to Coburg Little Athlete and Coburg Harriers junior Xavier Burton who tonight competed in the Quarter Finals of Victoria's Fastest Kid as a prelude to the Victorian Milers Club. Burton ran a blistering time and was desperately unlucky to just miss out on qualifying for the semi-final round to be held in a couple of weeks by 0.09 of a second. Well done Xavier from everyone at the Coburg Harriers