IT was a good day to be a Williamson on Sunday at the Bathurst Half Marathon 10 kilometre event with a brother and sister duo taking honours in the race.
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Orange’s Mitch Williamson is no stranger to success at the event and on Sunday produced a brilliant effort to pick up his fourth win.
Even more impressively he managed to record a personal best time (32 minutes 34 seconds) not just for the event, but for the 10km distance in general in terms of road races and did it despite bitterly cold and windy conditions.
Just to top it all off, his sisters Nicole and Carrie finished first and second in the women’s race, the pair having been coached by the brother in recent years.
“It was a good run in the end, I felt okay around the half-way mark though I’ve got a one mile race next weekend in Cobar so I was conscious of not trying to smash myself too much,” Mitch said.
“I had three weeks off about six weeks ago and that’s the first time I’ve ever had time off that hasn’t been injury related. It was a great chance to work on my strength and that sort of thing and it has probably helped my speed a bit.
“It was great to see how well both the girls went as well, they did an awesome job.”
As if the results on Sunday didn’t offer enough proof of the winner’s Midas touch, 12 months earlier his girlfriend Liz Simpson took out the women’s race too.
Another Orange runner in Nathan Sutherland was a couple of minutes behind the winner, while the first Bathurst runner home in the men’s race was Brandon Martin who crossed the line in 36.06 to finish third overall.
In her previous attempts in the race Nicole Williamson had never managed better than third but was never really headed in her maiden victory.
“It wasn’t quite the best run I’ve had. My time [41.55] was about a minute or so off my PB but I’m building up to the Gold Coast 10km race and was pretty satisfied with how it all went,” she said.
“Mitch has been my coach for a while and has obviously done very well at this event over the last few years so it is nice to have some bragging rights of my own now.
“It was very hard to pace yourself out there at the front.
“I probably ran the first five kilometres a lot harder than I intended too and blew up a little bit towards the end but was still fairly satisfied.
“The weather wasn’t too bad because we do train in it when it is this cold and windy but I haven’t often raced in it when it has been like this before.”