2014 COBURG 24 HOUR CHAMPIONSHIPS

 The 2014 Coburg 24 Hour Carnival, held at Coburg on 5-6 April, saw what was undoubtedly the highest quality 24 Hour Track race ever staged in Australia.

The carnival hosted the annual AURA 24 Hour Track Championships and the two new National Champions did themselves proud, producing huge results. In the men’s run, Victorian runner Barry Loveday started conservatively but took the lead after several hours and, from then on, was never headed, passing the half way mark in around 132km and then actually negative splitting to produce a huge PB distance of 165.000km. This is the second longest ever by an Australian behind that of the the great Yiannis Kouros and was a 22km PB for Barry. In the women’s run, WA runner Bernadette Benson ran similarly, starting conservatively in the warm and sunny Saturday conditions but eventually outdistancing the opposition with her new Australian record of 238.261km, more than 9km further than Helen Stanger’s previous record of 229.080km. Congratulations to our AURA medallists Barry Loveday, Ewan Horsborough, Matthew Eckford, Bernadette Benson, Jodie Oborne and Nikki Wynd.

Since most places were reserved for the runners, only small walk fields contested this year’s carnival but the third major highlight of the meet went to one of the walkers with Victorian Michelle Thompson setting a whole swathe of new Australian intermediate records and a final record breaking total of 190.984km.

Overall, the meet produced some 32 new records, run and walk, Australian and Canadian, Open and Age, and set a new high for Australia. Of the 48 starters, 6 achieved distances greater than 230km, 15 were in excess of 200km and 27 were in excess of 100 miles. Such depth and quality have never been seen so abundantly before.

2014 saw the Coburg Harriers team drop its manual lapscoring system in favour of a fully automated chip system, compliments of Brett and Robyn Saxon of Trails+ in Melbourne (see http://www.trailsplus.com.au). And it worked like a treat! Thanks also to our other major sponsor Phil van Duren of Top Ten Treks (www.toptentreks.com.au) and thanks to the large team of loyal event supporters who laboured behind the scenes once again to ensure this iconic event ran so smoothly.