Scott Lawrence

Saturday 2.05pm Sydney Olympic Park Blacktown

M45-49 Australian Masters Championship 1500m 3rd 4m23

I had a poor nights sleep , a combination of my Cold, the rain and sleeping with my 14 year old son Oliver! (My hosts Cathy & Grant are having renovations done and there is a tarp on the roof keeping the rain out = well nearly = it's starting to leak in and so Oli's mattress got wet so he kipped with me).
My main competition this year as last was going to be Tasmanian John Jago who this year has run 4m10 a full 8secs quicker than me!
John ran the 800m yesterday in a pretty quick 2m03! I set off, as I did last year, straight into the lead and through 300m in 48/49rather hot!
I led through the next 400m (didn't note the time!) and also the next 300m before John cruised up and past with 500m to go (same as last year!). I'd heard the announcer say that three of us were away and was surprised when I'd heard the third guy was Scott Lawrence who ran about 4m30 last year. Scott flew past me with 300m to go and I didn't have anything to counter with! John won in a slow for him 4m18, Scott was second in 4m22 and I was third in 4m23. I felt spent and lethargic. As is normal I found these quicker races lead to me 'tieing up' and perhaps lack of recent track work showed up and weakened my performance.
I was very impressed by Scott's improvement and it was good to catch up with John a year after the last Nationals.
I also met M44 Dr. Jamie Harrison (2nd in 800m yesterday 2m02 !!) for the first time in 18 years and witnessed him in win the next race after ours , run a comfortable 4m17 - unfortunately for me, he was conserving himself for tomorrows 5000m where we will race each other (I get the opportunity to revenge defeat by John and Scott as both should also be racing the 5).

I didn't report yesterday Keith Bateman (M53) finished 2nd in the 10K in 34m03.