Anyway, this event served as the selection trials for the Australian team to compete at the World XC championships in March at Bydgoszcz, Poland. As such, it was a very elite field that lined up in the junior and senior, mens and womens events, where my involvement was not as competitor but behind the scenes in helping put the event on. And it was fun!!
Last year I was fortunate to be invited to join an Athletics Victoria (AV) committee for the winter season, called "XCR", by Tim Crosbie who works with AV and who has a hand in many different aspects of athletics as an administrator, coach, and more. He's a nice guy who I've got to know reasonably well, and I've been really impressed with how he manages things, from the bigger picture to the small details. So I went along to the meetings, attended (and competed) in the events and learnt a lot through the process, including an appreciation for the amount of effort and dedication that goes into the sport and XCR events by AV staff, officials, volunteers and more. As an athlete it's easy to be oblivious to the details behind the scenes.
So as our Relay For Life event last December finished up I could forsee myself getting a little more involved in the behind the scenes aspects of the sport, with the staging of the XC trials race being a great event to get an introduction at. AV was to stage the event - the course and logistics - while Athletics Australia (AA) would run it. Tim was going to be away on the weekend of the race (last weekend) so he asked myself and Kevin Richardson to fill-in...in reality, it takes 2 regular people to do the work of Tim anyway. Tim had done the leg work in mapping out the course, and the 3 of us did a final reconnaissance just before xmas with final tips and advice for setting up the course before Tim flew out for a few weeks holiday.
Last week Kevin and I mapped out our plan of attack for setting up the course, benefitting from the work by Michelle from AV who had done the liaison and coordination with Parks Victoria for us to actually be there. Course set-up requires quite a wide range of equipment, from flags to bollards, tents, tables, generators, ropes and more, which was all packed in the Aths Vic van ready for us to pick up. So on Friday afternoon I picked up the van and got behind the wheel with a bit of responsibility, not just for the vehicle but for us to actually set up the course.
Our plan was to meet at Brimbank Park at 5pm on Saturday and do as much set-up as possibly before the park closed at 8pm. It was a little like fronting up to a blank canvas with an idea in mind to turn it into a work of art, except our canvas was a patchy grass, tussocky, undulating area of the park. Where do you start??? - we weren't even completely familiar with the gear in the van let alone the best process for setting things up.
So we began at the start, literally, drawing a line in the dirt where the start - and finish - lines would be. Then we pegged out the chutes the runners would run through, taking care to follow our layout map and also consider what would be the best configuration for everyone. The start / finish area looked pretty good, although would really come to life once ropes and bunting tape was strung up, which left the next - and biggest - task being to put little flags in around the 2km course, and measure it to ensure it was accurate. This was tedious.
With blue flags on the right, orange flags on the left we marked out the course as was planned while at the same time measuring it with the wheel and adjusting it to make up distance. In the end it ended up being accurate within 5m per 2km lap...all of which took a lot of walking!! We wound up just before 8pm, park close, and covered in dust packed up the van and headed home, due back at park opening at 6:30am on Sunday morning.
Sunday morning was race day, with the first event at 7:30am leaving only 60mins to finalise the set-up. The AA officials descended on the area en masse, which was fantastic since they knew exactly what to do and helped do the final markings of the course, finish area, admin area, and more. I think we were all ready to go with about 15min to spare - great team work - which meant Kevin & I now had the luxury of being able to simply spectate as the best runners in Australia ran around to win selection on the Australian team.
To really condense the races down, they ran fast and well, making our course look easy. There were some great performances, and perhaps some athletes who left a little disappointed. A particularly heartening performance was the senior womens winner, Benita Willis, who was one of the runners that came down to the course on Saturday evening to check it out and was happy to share a friendly chat while we pegged things out - a prior world XC champion with some grace and style.
The last race finished about 9:45am and within 45mins the place was cleaned up, equipment packed, the van was loaded and it barely looked like we'd been there. It was great teamwork and a job well done by everyone. In the footnotes of Australian Athletics history it will note the results of the World XC trials at Brimbank Park; a mere checkpoint in time where a suburban park came to life for a few brief hours.
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