2025 - FCC hosted Marathon Race at Tay Creggan in Hawthorn

Sunday 3 May.  The Yarra.  Hawthorn.  Doubles (well, mostly).

From 7am, a small but extremely well organised team of FCC volunteers, led by Tony Ladson, descended on Strathcona's beautiful Tay Creggan campus ready to set up and host our annual marathon race.  Supported by just about perfect weather, they did a fabulous job of preparing and keeping athletes, parents and friends organised and happy.

There were plenty of us racing - 104 in total - with 50 of these being FCC paddlers.  As a paddler, I cannot thank the PV and FCC organisers and volunteers enough - everything ran like clockwork including getting us all on to the river (always a challenge at Tay Creggan given the limited dock space) in record time.  A huge thank you to the safety boat crews, the turn buoy pairs, the raft marshals, the start and finish line team, registration team, carpark monitors, set up and clean up team ... and of course to Strathcona and Strathcona parents who were so welcoming and provided plenty of lovely food.  Also thanks to those who loaded, unloaded and towed the VYPA and Trinity trailers to and from the event.

Racing was fast - well, at least when paddling downstream it was fast.  The outgoing tide, and occasional gusts of wind, did make the upstream legs a bit of a battle.  There were a few spills, but the warm and mostly calm weather meant that these were fairly quickly recovered, emptied and sent on their way.  It was certainly a relief to reach that finish line, without much left in "the tank"!

Photographer Rob Cruse took photos on FCC's behalf and - well - he takes awesome photos, capturing our athletes, families and the atmosphere of the day beautifully.  His photos from the day are here and are available for download - as long as you attribute him in any use of the photo.

There's a bunch of photos below - lots more at Rob's website.