South Bendigo Athletics Club young gun Archie Reid has blasted to 6th place in 65 minutes and 42 seconds in the ‘Think Big! Launceston Half Marathon’ on the weekend. This time is an average pace of 3:07 minutes per kilometre.
It was the 19 year old’s second trip to the Launceston Running Festival, having previously competed at this event back in 2017.
How the race unfolded
Archie was rightly on the front row of the start line and went with the leaders from the gun. The pace was ‘hot’ early and Archie found himself in the second pack with around five runners who ran through the 10k split at around 30 mins 10 seconds (Note: 3:01 min/k pace).
From there a few dropped away and Archie was solo from 14 km onwards:
“There was a strong headwind to contend with on the home and a hill at 14km that was a killer,” Archie said. “This was a very tough course to negative split.”
Top Six
Ahead of Archie on the road was some extremely well-credentialed athletes, with Australian Olympic representative Brett Robinson taking line honours ahead of a tight finish for second and third.
- Brett Robinson – 01:01:38
- Thomas Do Canto – 01:02:13
- Ed Goddard – 01:02:16
- Riley Cocks – 01:04:02
- Tim Vincent – 01:04:13
- Archie Reid – 01:05:43
The reaction
“I’m very happy with the result!” Archie told us post-race, adding that there is definitely more he feels he can improve on and keep learning from the race.
“My goal was to get an official 65min run “on the board” as I ran 65 in a Time Trial during the year with Brady (see video here), but times in Time Trials obviously aren’t official.”
Life during COVID
Archie has managed to stay motivated during 2020 thanks to the tight-knit training group in Echuca-Moama with Glenn McMillan and Brady Threlfall (Bendigo Harriers). The trio have trained really well through COVID and completed regular Time Trials over a range of distances to keep their motivation up.
“It was such a great feeling to finish a real race after COVID,” Archie explained.
“Time Trials are great, but there’s nothing like a real race and recording an official time.”
What’s next on the horizon?
Archie is eyeing a few track races in Jan/Feb 2021 and hopefully a spot in the National 10,000m Championships: Zatopek:10 on Australia Day (learn more about the Zatopek:10). His next goals are to lower his 10k/5k times down, too.
We look forward to cheering Archie on!
