#weranthiscity #goachilles #melbourne

Sami, bulldozing in front of Kevin, with Lucy as his guide. Another Run Melbourne runner beside them.

By Tim Emeny
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The slogan goes 'We Run This City', well Achilles Melbourne certainly did as we brought our sea of yellow team tops to the event! The greatest city in the world is not known for the greatest weather in the world at this time of the year. The forecast was looking ominous in the lead up to the big day, would it be a repeat of a very wet and cold Run for the Kids? For the Achilles Melbourne team, none of that mattered as we were on our way with our biggest team yet! But lucky for us, the forecast changed to superb running weather - fine, sunny and calm. It could not have been a finer Melbourne Winter day!

The Run Melbourne event saw a staggered start with the half marathon teams away first at 7am with three Achilles teams taking on this mighty challenge. Next away, at a much nicer time of 9:15am was our largest group of athletes, with five Achilles teams taking on the 10km course. Last but certainly not least were the two 6km Achilles teams, who started at the very social time of 10:45am. 

The courses were quite challenging not only for distance, they were also quite technical as they wound their way through the southern end of the beautiful city of Melbourne, repeatedly crossing over the Yarra river and passing through some of Melbourne’s beautiful parks. 

There were fantastic results for all our teams in all the distances. A real highlight was the large and enthusiastic crowd cheering us on all the way with many callouts “Go Achilles”. It was a wonderful, exciting, successful day on all levels. With the help of our regular training, perfect weather and great crowd support, there were beaming smiles at the finish line, personal bests and successful debutants to new distances. 

I think it is very safe to say we will be back next year, with talk of some members looking to attempt to complete all three events on the one day next year. Great events like this have us thinking: "What challenge can we take on next?"

Go Achilles Melbourne!

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The half marathon team proudly wearing their badges. Left-right: Tanya, Francois, Adrienne, Tim, Adam and Shay.