The irrepressible Meggy Boan – a rare three time winner in her first season with our club last year – began her 2012 campaign with a stunning win in the five kilometre Dooen Engineering Handicap.
When the waif-like Chinese expatriate made her cross country debut with the club in a 5km event last year she looked out of her league as she meandered around in a modest 28.26 minutes.
But like a rock rolling downhill, the gritty Rupanyup gardener gathered momentum and kept ripping minutes off her 5km times – an astounding 5.25 minutes in the intervening 12 months – enabling her to scoot over the dust-dry Dooen course to post an impressive 23.01. By her own admission, “leggy Meggy” likes to win and she is relentless in that goal – four wins in a calendar year is testament to that.
She trains alone and has a rigorous routine that most serious runners would find tedious – a daily spin around “Jack’s Track”, a winding 3.25 kilometre “nature” course at Rupanyup, and repeated 400 metre stride outs back and forth amounting to a 40 minute workout overall.
“I basically maintained my fitness over summer, running at the coolest time of the day, and making sure that when I race I try to do better every time,” she said.
Meggy has learned how to race and used the speedier Rick Price as a pacemaker for as long as she could stay in touch, knowing that the handicaps would work in her favour if she could stick with him. Her best in the warm and humid conditions was too plucky for Rick who was 37 seconds in arrears, but he looks ready to win again after an injury plagued season last year.
Third was Gary Howden who recorded fastest time, but was a further six seconds behind Rick on adjusted handicap.
In the Sub-Junior (Under 12) version of the race, sibling rivalry came to the fore when Blair Greenhalgh and Amy Greenhalgh were locked in a ding-dong battle for most of the kilometre course with Blair just prevailing over his younger sister and younger brother Ryan splitting them when handicaps were adjusted
By Keith Lofthouse