The two Demons broke away from the pack to run out joint-winners in front of second-year rookie James Magner.
Elite performance manager Dave Misson said the top five was as he expected.
“Tom McDonald and Dan Nicholson crossed the line together to win it,” he told melbournefc.com.au.
“Then we had Jimmy Magner, who was third, and then Trenners (Jack Trengove) and Rohan Bail came fourth and fifth.
“That top five was what I thought would come across the line. They’re times are great and we’re really happy.”
Misson was also pleased with midfielder Jordie McKenzie, who was in the next bracket after the top five.
“It’s the first time that Jordie’s actually ever been ready to go for the beginning of pre-season and it’s the first time-trial he’s ever run,” he said.
“He didn’t quite know how to run it - he just tacked on with some blokes at the front and tried to hang on in the end, so he ran really well.”
Co-captain Jack Grimes ran a three-km time-trial at AAMI Park.
“We got Grimsey to run a three-km at AAMI Park around the track and had a couple of people run with him and he ran a big PB (personal best) as well, so we’re really pleased,” Misson said.
Overall, Misson was “really impressed” with the way the players ran the time-trial.
“They’ve had a pretty solid off-season, with a strong program, which is really structured,” he said.
“Today (Saturday) was really about what they’ve done in the off-season and whether they’ve come ready to go for pre-season.
“From what we saw, we were really impressed. We had 10 PBs out of 20-odd players and a lot of players reached their target times and the ones that didn’t weren’t too far over it. So it gives us a great launching pad to go for the eight weeks pre-Christmas.”
Misson said pre-season would step-up considerably from next week until Christmas.
“We get into the real structured Monday to Friday sessions from Monday, leading into [the] Darwin [pre-season camp in December],” he said.
“We’ll probably do another three-km [time-trial] after Christmas and then we’ll have another three or four running tests before we break on the 21st [of December] before Christmas.
“It’s head down bum up now and we’re ready to go, but today [Saturday] tells us that the boys have got a really good foundation to work from. We’re pretty pleased with the program that we’re going to be putting in place.”
