ABOUT half of the Mount Isa Athletics Club members braved the heat to attend the most recent competition days and were rewarded with a good number of personal bests.

Traditionally the latter part of the athletics season becomes the most difficult for competitors to achieve personal bests due to their constant improvement throughout the year which is what makes Ryan Hujanen’s feat of five from five personal bests even more noteworthy.

Club officials were most impressed with the athletes aged between five and nine years as these age groups managed to secure PBs in one quarter of their events with the 5-year age group actually achieving personal bests in every second event last week.

There was also a surprising number of athletes equalling their current times and distances.

Thirteen-year-old Bradley Watt has continued his run of PBs, backing up his perfect score at Longreach with four from five the following week.

Watt was not alone in his efforts with Justin Crick, Kaleb Bennett, Jemma Russell, Hayley Watt and Rhys Munns all finishing the day with four from five.

Athletes are now starting to become more comfortable with the technique of Mount Isa’s newly-introduced hammer throw event with PBs for the event being rapidly pushed forward. Fourteen-year-old Nikki Dickson was unlucky not to advance her personal best by nearly four metres when her best throw of the day fouled out at the 20m line.

Brad Watt was having a personal competition with throws coach Sharon Dickson which saw him add two metres to his best to end up with a 23.89m throw and James Sweeney hit the 30m mark for the first time with a throw of 30.02m.

After more specialised training this week, all are hoping for further improvement at this Sunday’s competition.

Athletes to surpass Legend Certificate levels from the last two weeks were Hayley Watt, Jayne Metekingi, Cody Donn, Otto Tweedie, Shanara Body, Kayla Horne, Dan Woodhouse, James Sweeney, Denzil Perkins, Justin Crick, Ben Horsnell, Alyssa Smith, Luke May, Adam Farlow, Jacob Cooper and Mars Larsen.

Denzil Perkins may be a name to keep an ear out for in the future with the 5-year-old setting new records in his 70m and 60m mini hurdle races.

Perkins already bettered the 100m record for his age group earlier this year.

A battle between club coach and president David Scott and 15-year-old Mars Larsen saw Larsen add nearly half a metre to his triple jump record, finishing with a jump of 11.12m. Meanwhile, Watt broke an eight-year-old javelin record with a throw of 28.65m and James Sweeney pushed his javelin record out to 42.28m.

Holly Johnstone’s preparation for the upcoming school state championships is proving to be on track as she took another two seconds off her 400m time coming home in 61.9s. Johnstone also followed up her win in the Longreach Invitational Handicap race with a win off scratch at the recent Mount Isa Gift and other club athlete Shaun Scarborough took out the men’s race and Jake Donn and Gracie Ryder came home first in the juniors.

The final major carnival of the athletics season will be the ANQ North Queensland Championships which will be held from October 2-4 on the Townsville Sports Reserves’ synthetic track.

As Mount Isa AFL has requested use of Sunset Oval for their grand final on what was to be the last competition day, the final athletics club day has now be moved to Sunday.

Equipment set up and barbecue breakfast is at 8am with the commencement of competition at 9am sharp.

The date for the 2009 athletics season break-up has now been set for November 1st at Tony White Oval and will commence at 3pm.