On a day when seconds were important, Tara Melhuish (Junior Women) was the only individual winner for the Canberra Cockatoos in National League #5, a Sprint Distance race through the Sandy Bay Campus of the University of Tasmania. After being a few seconds down at the first radio check, Melhuish picked up the pace and was ahead for the rest of the course to win in 16 min 18 sec, 42 seconds ahead of Tasmania’s Zoe Dowling. Her time was seven seconds faster than the best of the Senior Women, Natasha Key, who ran the same course.
Belinda Lawford (Senior Women) would have been very disappointed with dropping a minute over the final stages of her course to go from equal first to finish third. Unofficially the Senior Women won their division and the Senior Men were second. The top Senior Men were Matt Doyle 3rd, Matt Crane 4th, and Marty Dent 6th. Dent started slowly and improved from being 20th at the first radio check to just miss a place. Patrick Miller, sixth, was the best of the Junior Men.
The official results are here, the splits by course here, the maps and around 200 photos are here and close up photos of 12 Canberra Cockatoos are here.