WHO President and Round 5 organiser Ted Mulherin summed up what most competitors might have liked to have said - "It's bloody hot - I'm glad I'm not running tonight!".
With temperatures still above 35 deg C at 7:00pm, almost all of the 62 competitors who started between 5:00pm and 6:30pm experienced the hot conditions and any interested onlookers might have thought that the runners should have been admitted to the hospital - it deals with pyschiatric cases!
The 3.1Km course made the most of the hospital grounds with a number of legs requiring careful navigation through gaps that were not too obvious, and around the historic sandstone buildings. WHO's own Andy Hill went out at the hottest part of the evening to set the pace with a scorching 15m17s. Andy held the lead for quite some time, and held off Peter Preston who came in just 1s behind him, but it was Big Foot's Michael Burton who was to steal the lead over the last 4 controls and finish in 15m12s.
However Michael was probably as surprised as the rest of the field was when Canberra's Shannon Jones appeared on the start line, and even more surprised when Shannon showed eveyone a clean pair of heals to win in 14m44s. Review of Shannon's splits shows that she was never lower than 3rd place over the first half of the course, and took the lead at control 8 and did not look back after that.
Congratulations to Shannon on her win, to all those who competed in the extreme temperatures and to WHO for staging Round 5 at a great sprint location.
Full results and splits can be found here.
