Steven Chung made a winning Tamworth Running Festival debut on Sunday, the 22-year old medical student scorching the field to take out the PRD Nationwide half marathon.
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Competing in his first ever half marathon, Chung led virtually from start to finish of the 21km race and crossed almost 20 minutes ahead of his nearest rival.
"I went out at my goal pace and then I think from the beginning I was able to set up a lead. Essentially I was just following the guy on the bike, trying to stick to my goal pace and just running my own race," he said.
After clocking 34.45 minutes for the first 10km, which would have been enough for second in the Sampson's Car Repairs Tamworth Ten, he kept a consistent pace to finish in 1hr 9.34mins (79 minutes).
"I set out to beat 73 minutes and so I'm very happy to more than achieve that," Chung said.
He started running when he was in Year 7.
"Before that I was terrible at all sports," he joked.
"I'd be the sort of person who'd be snapped in half in rugby, who wouldn't be able to kick a soccer ball straight but I felt like anyone can run a little bit and so I started running."
"It wasn't until Year 9 that I started becoming faster and faster and by the end of high school I realised that this was something I was really passionate about and really wanted to keep going."
He has previously been involved in trail running, and is preparing to compete in the marathon as part of the Blackmores Running Festival in Sydney next month where he hopes to break 2hrs 40 minutes.
A regular on the local parkrun scene, after moving down from Armidale to Tamworth for a work placement, Chung was keen to give the Tamworth event a crack.
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"I'm doing a full year placement at the hospital and so I figured it would be a really good chance to actually enter this festival," the Sydney native said.
He said the last third of the race was tough as the fatigue started to set in but was spurred on by the support from his fellow runners.
"I think my favourite part of the race was the second lap when I started passing the 10k'ers," he said.
"The best part was, because Tamworth is such a community, at least half the people I passed would all shout out something in support and that really gave me a really good psychological boost to keep going in that second lap as things started to hurt more and more."
James McMaster was second (1.27.02) and Andy Smith third (1.29.13), just ahead of women's winner, and former Tamworth local, Georgie McBride (1.31.04).
Tamworth's Mick Chapman was first home in the Tamworth Ten with Hannah McRae the first woman to finish.
In the Tamworth Shopping World Fun Five Josh McRae took the overall honours while Armidale young gun Chiyo Brown just pipped Gunnedah's Kelly Watson to win the women's race.
