Jeremy Roff has smashed the 4km course record during the invitational race at the NSW Novice championships at Scarborough Park in Sydney.
Roff, who will leave for Europe at the end of the month to race in preparation of his debut at the world championships in Berlin, where he will race the 1500m, covered the flat yet sandy two lap course in 11:06.
Roff enjoyed the company of training partner Jeff Hunt for the first three-quarters of the race, before convincingly pulling away (Hunt finished in 11:22). Roff is believed to be only the third athletes to break 12 minutes for the course, with the previous course record being held by training partner Nick Cope at 11:41 in 2006. Hunt had previously covered the course in 11:47 the same year.
"It was good to just get out there and have a hit out so that I don't get too far away from racing. I'm in a pretty heavy training block, but I don't want to do too much training and loose that racing edge," said Roff following the race.
"You can't really worry too much about the time over cross country, but the aim was to run around 11 minutes and I wasn't far off, so I'm not too disappointed."
In the invitation 10km race, Eloise Wellings made a welcome return to racing after a long absence due to injury. The 2006 Commonwealth Games 5000m fourth placegetter, who from eyewitness accounts missed the start of the race by up to 30 seconds, ran 36:44.
In the feature races of the afternoon, the novice championships (for athletes who have not previously won a state medal), 19 year old Jason Harrison scored a convincing win in 31:59 from fellow teenager Kevin Batt (32:24), with Mitchell Ryan third (32:30). In the women's race, over 4km, Anna Neumaier (14:08) took the race out by 22 seconds from 12 year old Sarah Marvin and Caitlin Delaney.
Other results of note were Hollie Emery's run of 13:08 in the invitation 4km and Jeremy Horne's 31:27 in the open 10km, ahead of former world champion triathlete Chris McCormack (32:18).
Results of the Novice events are available here courtesy of Athletics NSW.
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