Gilgandra's Clare Palmer wasn't treating the 21.1km Zebra Zoom half marathon event at the Dubbo Stampede as a warm-up, running a kilometre every four minutes en-route to taking out a first place finish in both her age group and gender categories.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
However, the event was a prelude to something much bigger, with it being Palmer's last local run before she heads overseas to contest a monster Ultraunner's event in Romania.
Next Sunday, yeah, I'll be taking on the world 50km.
- Clare Palmer
"I'm actually using this as a bit of a last hit-out, I'm going to Romania for the world championships they're having there across the 50 kilometres."
That contest, the International Association of Ultrarunners' 50km, will take place on September 1 in Brasov, Romania.
"I wanted to compete here and see if I could hold a good pace for that and it's looking good," Palmer said.
Palmer was able to complete the course in just under an hour and a half (1:24:37), beating out her closest rivals Georgie McBride (1:31:06) and Emma Fessey (1:34:35) by five whole minutes.
"I've been training for the 50km, so this honestly seemed a bit easy, it's a little hard, because I was running harder than I would for the 50km, but I'm fit and it felt real good, so that's a very good sign," Palmer said.
"I knew I was losing pace once I came into the zoo, it gets very hilly, and we had a bit of a headwind coming into that final stretch, so I could feel the pace slowing down, but it just didn't matter, I was still going good."
"I'm a little nervous about heading to Romania, but mostly about the overseas travel, I think I'll go alright with the running."