Last Sunday, 10 June 2007 saw the staging of the Australian 100 km Road Championships on the Gold Coast. Among the field of 36 athletes was Coburg Harrier's own Deanne Nobbs, along with several athletes well known to the Coburg 24 Hour Carnival

Deanne has been in intense training for this event with 60 kilometre training runs included in her program leading up to the event. The ultimate goal was to make the Australian team. For the women, a time of under 9:30 would guarantee automatic selection

In hot conditions, and a course that took in a 1 km a stretch of sand on each leg of the two out and back loops, Deanne was the first female home in an extraordinary time of 9:55.39 to become Australian champion. Deanne went through 50 km's in 4:22 and 75 km's in 7:12, so a third 25 km split of 2:50, was followed up by a last 25 km split of 2:43

In a remarkable performance, Deanne was 8th overall - just in front of well known ultra runner and Coburg fun run and 24 Hour regular Kelvin Marshall - and was an incredible four hours ahead of her nearest female competitor

It is the best result by a Coburg Harrier athlete since Stacey Van Dueren's third place at last year's Melbourne Marathon. As far as national championship events go, it is the best performance since Coburg Harrier's own paralympian Lachlan Jones was crowned CP World Champion in 2001. So far as able bodied athletes are concerned, one would need to go back to Craig Semple (now with Glen Huntly), who won the U20 section of the 1989 Australian Cross Country Championships

Debate will now rage over whether Deanne will be selected to compete in the World 100 km Championships to be held in the Netherlands this September. While Deanne's time did not meet the automatic qualifying criteria, Australian selectors will have to take into account that the new course this year was slower than last year, with the sand section speculated to have cost athletes at least ten minutes, and the fact that a local community festival was taking place in a section of the course, further slowing runners down

Well done Deanne on your Australian title from all your teammates at the Coburg Harriers. And to all Harriers, let's make sure we get up to Shepparton for the Shepparton Fun Run weekend on 26/27 August, so that we might salute our Australian champion

Deanne Nobbs - at the Melbourne Marathon last year. It would be the last of five marathons Deanne ran in 2006