Otis Robinson successfully defended his Flying Colours Round The Town 5K title by running his second best time for the distance yesterday, stopping the clock at 17:43.

Going into the race, Robinson had hopes of getting close to the 17-minute barrier, but the warm and humid conditions were not conducive to personal records, and added to that was a lack of any top opposition to push him towards a faster time.

But Robinson was pleased with his morning’s work and a near two-minute cushion ahead of his closest pursuer, Richard Exon, who clocked 19:34.

“I had hoped to do 17 minutes flat, but it was hot and humid. I took it out hard and then felt like a comfortable second mile,” said Robinson, before checking his stopwatch to reveal his first mile was run in 5:46 and the second in 5:22. The final mile was 5:39.

“I wanted to send a message out that I am ready for May 24, and that I’m going to be there,” said the Swan’s Running Club athlete, whose winning time was a minute faster than his 2006 victory.

“I was hoping that there would be someone to push the pace with me because I wanted to go faster. My fitness level now would suggest I can maybe get down to 16:30 on a flat course.”

In the past few weeks Robinson has been concentrating on swift track sessions, such as eight by 400 metres at an average pace of 64 seconds for a single lap of the track.

The Round The Town race certainly favours runners who don’t mind “doing a few laps”, as the runners circle the town four times along Reid Street, Queen Street, Front Street and Court Street. Keeping track of how many laps have been run and how many are still to go is all part of the challenge.

First woman Rosa Peichoto defended her title, running a time of 20:47 — just over 10 seconds slower than her 2006 winning time.

She is also looking ahead to the May 24 Marathon Derby, an event much closer to her preferred distance.

Peichoto expects to run a little over 1:30 as she did last year.

After finishing yesterday’s 5K she said: “This distance is too short for me. I picked up the pace on the last lap, but there are so many turns in the race,” she said.

The event also marked the on-Island racing swan-song of Lisa Van Wanrooy, who over the past six years has been a regular competitor in nearly all of Bermuda’s road races and has also been a co-race director of January’s annual Fairmont-to-Fairmont Race.

Fittingly, for her final Bermuda race, she was amongst the medal winners, collecting an age-category award.

In the KPMG race series junior two-mile event, Juma Mouchette was the fastest in 11 minutes 45 seconds, five seconds to the good of Dage Minors, with Nakeno Creighton third in 12:46.

Rachel Fox, sixth overall, ran 13:20.