With 500 metres to go in Sunday’s Bendigo Athletic Club Viatek 8k handicap it was a race in three with backmarker Michael Preece closing in on Kevin Shanahan and Glenn Roulston.  Kevin showed the benefit of more than 30 years of training and competition, managing to find the something extra needed to hang on for a 7 second victory in a good time of 34:06 over the challenging Woodvale course.  This was Kevin’s best performance for the season so far.

Michael managed to overtake Glenn and these two claimed second and third places.  Michael’s excellent time of 26:38 also earned him the Bendigo Bank Fastest Time award, and the fastest woman in the race was the rapidly improving Kerry Ellis.  With Ingrid Douglass likely to miss the rest of the season with a stress fracture, the battle for fastest woman now looks to be between Kerry and Rhonda Schultz.

The Senior race next week drops back to the slightly shorter 6.5km distance.  This could bring Ben Goode back into calculations, and Glenn Roulston will no doubt have a say in the eventual result.  And as last Sunday’s second-place was Michael Preece’s 15th top-10 finish in a row he can be expected to be looming up behind the leaders as the finish line approaches.