By Tania Phillips
Currumbin runner Yvonne Hillberg has held on to win the women ‘s overall title by just 11 seconds after five long distance running events at the 22nd Warwick Penthath-run held around the Southern Downs at the weekend.
Hillberg defeated last year’s winner Olivia Lennon despite a touch performance during the five races across two days. Hillberg had finished three minutes ahead of Lennon in the opening race but last year’s champion was determined not to relinquish her title without a fight slowly whittling the margin down to just 11 seconds after the 1500m through the centre of Warwick.
However, Hillberg, from the Good Time Running Club in Currumbin, held on to claim the overall championship in a time of three hours and six minutes.
It was first time both the men’s and women’s winners from the previous year and ironically both finished second this year with 2023 men’s winner Peter Bracken finishing behind Ipswich competitor Tom Anderson who finished the five races in two hours and 33 minutes.
Pentathrun president Neil Burtenshaw said the women’s event was the closest in the Pentath-run’s event and capped off an exciting, successful and different event.
“I think in total over the five races we had 16075 competitors finish all of the events,” he said.
“And in five different locations – it is definitely a logistical challenge to make all of that happen.
“You could sign up for individual event and there are a lot of people who do that- particularly the shorter runs which are popular with kids.
“He said there were about 240 who did all five events.”
Burtenshaw said they could not have run the event without a new committee behind them and all of the community groups that volunteered to help across the five events.
“Should we make a profit we donate the money back to the community group, split it up amongst them,” he said.
“In addition to that we’ve given about 30-35 defibs away to local community groups in the past five years.”
And while the racing was exciting Burtenshaw the weather was not what they had expected.
“We had unusual weather,” he said.
“I’ve been organising this event for the past 12 years and every Sandy Creek Hotel road race has been nice and warm and sunny and this year it rained. You know you have that cram as many people into a car as you can? Well, we had – cram as many people under a marquee as you can activity just before the race. It was unusual then Sunday morning is typically very cold this time of year out at Killarney – minus two, minus three this time it was 14 degrees with a little bit of rain. Those two races were significantly different weather wise but we still finished in the park at Sunday lunch time with a perfect end to the Pentathlon I would say.”
