The Burnie 10: Aussies Premier 10km Road Race + Longford Fun Run....

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Hiya, continuing with some blog enteries for the good people abroad, trying to entice them into a trip or two to Aus/Tassie with some sights from home. Please feel free to remove yourself from the mailing list if your sick of me clogging up pefectly good email space.... otherwise cheers!

Been an interesting week settling back into the swing of Tassie life, very layed back... Figured a good way to run out all those Grand Final beers was to enter the Burnie 10, the "premier" 10km road race in Australia!

Being a B10 virgin I headed off excitedly on Sunday morning to the chilly North West coast, about a 90 minute drive from my home in Launceston. This year was the largest field in the races history (helped by favourable weather) with a field of just over 3500 lining up at the start line. After some last minute instructions from my partner in crime Adam "spidey" Connell (a B10 veteran) we were under way. About a minute after the gun went we finally built up to a canter and crossed the start line. The race begins in the "city" centre (city=aboot 20,000) and heads along the sandy coastline on the highway.

All was going well until the 4km mark when we noticed the fit bastards already 2km ahead and well on their way back to the finish line. Then to add insult to injury we were over taken by some guy pushing a pram, fair dinkum, this bloke was flying! When a mother with twins in a pram pulled up along side it was time to kick, that would have been too much!!!

Adam finished a respectable 580 odd in about 46 minutes, I placed 653 in 47 minutes, not a bad first up effort. We fully expect to be seeded runners next year, only needing to slice 1:40 off (every kilometre) to match it with the big guns who finished just a touch over 29 minutes...

Quick photo op with Erin and Co and it was straight off to the pub for a quiet brew, at my expense for coming in behind Con, oh well, there's always next year....
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Another beautiful Sunday in Paradise (Longford) saw Ross, Fee, Jayda (the pup) and myself line up for the Longford 6km fun run. A quick, flat circuit starting and finishing in the back streets of quiet Longford, with about 400 odd people and few 4 legged friends... I ran a respectable 36th in about 27 mintutes, Shep 96th in 32mins, Fee and Jayda legged the long walk and came in towards the rear of the field. Good way to sweat the beer from the previous evening, perfect spring day after snow, yep snow, fell around the state even to seas level in some places... Summer must be on the way ;-)

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