The Browne Shield competitions have been run and won for another year and once again the Knox powerhouse has swept all before them. In the inter-venue section they jumped to the front in the first event and once Lavinia Petrie started running there was never going to be any catching them.
Their final margin was 101pts over an impressive effort from . . .Glen Eira who finished the season very strongly for a clear second and their total was actually the same as Knox scored last year. Aberfeldie were very consistent throughout for third but lacked the really high scorers to challenge the top two. East Burwood had their best year for quite awhile but some of the other venues were a bit disappointing considering their past strength in distance running.
Overall the general standard has been higher this year compared to last year and numbers are a little better. This year we had 90 men and 30 women competing compared to 81 men and 31 women last year which is encouraging and a reversal of the previous downward trend.
The half marathon on Sep 8th was the final race in the series and there were a large number of very high percentages recorded
In the men’s section the competition could not have been tighter. Going into the last race John Graham led by 0.07 of one point on a cumulative basis but was in reality about half a point behind Gary Stewart as Gary had outscored John by that much in the cross country and could drop that result if he ran better in the half. Both guys gave it everything they had to record some great percentages, 86.37 for John and 85.24 for Gary. Once these results were taken in and the scores from the cross country taken out it meant that John was the winner by 0.56 of one point!
Behind them Andrew Edwards actually made up ground on the leaders although recording a slightly lower percentage of 84.60 to finish just 5 pts behind in third place and it was good to see the next 4 places all over 300 pts. In the half there were some standout performances including overall winner Bruce Graham from the ACT with 90.34%, Mark Purvis 88.55% and Steven Quirk 87.92% plus several others over 80%.
In summing up the season can generally be considered as better than last year but the challenge as always is how to get more consistent entries to all events. The committee would welcome input from individuals or venues for any ideas that may help in this regard.