Jetsetter
Flies to Unexpected Win
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Gary
Howden |
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In a remarkable warm-up for
the opening event of the Stawell Amateur Athletic
Club season, club president Gary Howden trained in
China, Vietnam, Thailand and finally in Horsham before
winning the five kilometer Dooen Engineering Handicap,
held in the Ironbarks Forest last Saturday.
Seeming
refreshed and invigorated after his extended business
and pleasure trip to Asia, Gary surprised himself
when adjusted handicaps favored him with a 44 second
win over club stalwart, Col Barnett, who actually
ran the fastest time of the day with a blistering
19 minutes and 14 seconds.
Gary, who owns the Horsham
Telstra Store, had only recently returned from overseas
and counted a 3km walk along the Great Wall of China
with wife Sharon as one of his hardest workouts.
“They
don’t
call it the Great Wall for nothing, but what was
most surprising were the great steps you had to
negotiate. They really got the heart and the hamstrings
pumping,” a
flushed winner said.
More serious training followed
along the banks of the picturesque Truc Buch Lake
in central Hanoi where Gary was inspired by elderly
Vietnamese exercising from 6am to traditional music,
blaring from old radios and loudspeakers.
In Phuket,
Gary challenged himself to a steep run to a monument
honoring Prince Abhakara Kiartivongse, who is known
as the “Father of the Royal Thai Navy,” and
back in Horsham only had time for “a couple
of runs” before Saturday’s race.
“I
still don’t think I had done enough to be able
to win first-up,” he said. “I ran a slow
fourth kilometer but managed to shave 20 seconds
off that to run the last km in 4 minutes and 15 seconds,
which really pleased me.”
Gary’s actual
time of 20.45 carved nearly half-a-minute from his
effort in the corresponding race in 2010 in which
he could only manage 15th. Third in the Dooen Engineering
Handicap was another Horsham runner, Campbell Pallot
who was having his first run with the club and can
anticipate a successful year, along with his Horsham “stablemates” Glenn
Ryan and Dominic van Dyk who also made their debuts
with the club.
“In Horsham we don’t
have any hills so it’s great to come to Stawell
to run something a bit more challenging, over terrain
we just don’t see at home,” Campbell
said.
In the junior division of
the race, over two kilometers, Tobias Blair looked
fit and strong and was a little too seasoned for
the gallant runner-up Ellie Atherton, while in the
sub-juniors Amy Greenhalgh showed grim determination
in a nail-biting finish to beat Layla Atherton by
a breath.
By Keith Lofthouse
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