HE has already competed at countless Olympic and Commonwealth Games and World Championships.
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Now Rob de Castella can add running alongside the picturesque Hastings River to his list of achievements.
The Port Macquarie Running Festival may not be quite as well-known as those aforementioned places, but it doesn’t make it any less important.
De Castella easily completed the five-kilometre fun run alongside Clontarf Academy director Charlie Maher on Sunday and the two enjoyed some friendly competition, especially over the final few hundred metres.
“Charlie was our first Indigenous Marathon Foundation graduate who has moved to Port Macquarie in the last seven or eight months,” de Castella said.
“He asked me to come here and I ran with him for a little bit because he was struggling after doing the half and the 10-kay, but he took off in the last hundred metres and dropped me.”
The 60-year-old dual Commonwealth Games gold medallist said the Port Macquarie course was located in such a “beautiful part of the country”.
“They’re (marathon courses) all unique, they’ve all got their own character as does Port,” he said.
“The crowds, the other runners, the way that you pass each other going out and coming back, the atmosphere is great.”
De Castella said he enjoyed the lack of pressure on him running in Port Macquarie compared to the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
“Sometimes you don’t have the opportunity to look around and soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the crowd and interact so it’s nice in the twilight of my running years to be able to come down and enjoy it,” he said.
“I’ve done a lot of racing in the past and it’s great to be able to share some of my experiences with some of these young indigenous men.”
