WORLD ranked endurance runner Brendan Davies, who has just completed the gruelling 125km Trans Gran Canaria race in the Canary Islands, will be special guest speaker at a sports seminar and Q&A being held to launch the 2015 Charles Sturt University Bathurst Half Marathon and 10km races.

Davies, a resident of the Blue Mountains, is a former winner of both Bathurst races and was the 2012 and 2013 Australian Endurance Runner of the Year.

He will be joined by CSU academics – Associate Professor Rylee Dionigi and evergreen marathon runner Emeritus Professor Bob Meyenn – at the seminar tomorrow.

Bathurst Half Marathon race director Trevor Bayliss says the seminar will give a remarkable insight into how an elite athlete prepares for competition and how these strategies can be adapted by regular weekend athletes.

“But it will also provide inspiration and practical information on exercise and physical activity,” he said. “The information available from these speakers will be compelling.

“Rylee Dionigi specialises in the socio-cultural aspects of sport, which are so important in regional communities such as ours. She has published studies in sport sociology, ageing and physical activity, exercise psychology, and leisure studies.

“Bob Meyenn’s “can-do” approach to life would inspire any local athlete. He ran his first marathon aged 61 and hasn’t stopped competing in endurance races since – notching up several New York marathons as well as Berlin, Rome, Paris marathons, and next month will add the London Marathon to his remarkable list of achievements.”

Each speaker will present a short talk and then form a panel to answer questions from members of the audience.

Davies’ most recent feat in the Canary Islands will be sure to intrigue anyone interested in pushing their boundaries.

He started the event with a “start-slow finish-hard” strategy to put himself in a winning position at the pointy end of the contest, but it came unstuck when he took a wrong turn and lost a lot of ground. Even when the extra kilometres began to take their toll and he realised he had lost all hope of winning, he merely adjusted his goal.

Instead of aiming to win or finish in the placings, the challenge was to just complete the race – a goal that will resonate with most runners.

“Everything on this island is massive,” he wrote on his blog. “The mountains. The gorges. The ravines.”

He was prepared for all of that, but what he had not taken into account was the size of the rocks he had to run across. He described running across this surface at times like running up and down ski slopes, but instead of snow you had to deal with large rocks underfoot.

“It was the most technical but exhilarating running I have ever done,” he blogged. “The terrain ate me up and spat me out.”

The CSU Bathurst Half Marathon and 10km races will be held on Sunday, May 3. Go to bathurstrunning.com.au or follow Bathurst Half Marathon & 10km on Facebook.