Albion Park Rail runner Zac O'Neil secured the biggest win of his ultra-marathon career by taking out the Great North Walk 100 Mile (161km) in Gosford.
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O'Neil finished at Patonga Beach at 6.42am after 24 hours and 42 minutes trawling through the trails of a dreary Brisbane Waters National Park on Sunday.
The time was 10 minutes shy of the course record set by 2021 third-placer Damian Smith who finished 32 minutes behind O'Neil. In a field of 35, Mark Firth finished second, 23 minutes behind the Illawarra local.
The 25-year-old completed his first marathon in 2019 in an event in Dunedin and he has finished two runs in excess of 100km leading into the weekend's effort. O'Neil admitted he felt sheer relief to cross the finish line and felt taking out overall honours was a top reward for a tough period of training.
"To be honest I was just happy for it to be over," he said.
"I have been training for the last few months. I had a bit of a setback with a calf injury about a month or so ago, but thankfully I got there in the end. The GNW was the next step for me because it's renowned as a pretty competitive and challenging 100 miler.
"My previous runs can't compare to this. The terrain here was a lot tougher, I hadn't seen the course before and I hadn't experienced a run with this much elevation."
O'Neil trailed Leigh Chapman by 46 minutes with 55km to go, however, Chapman, who had led for the entirety of the race to that point, hit the wall and withdrew at the penultimate checkpoint.
"It's a competition, but it sucks to see others not being able to make it," O'Neil said.
"At [the checkpoint at] Girrakool I went and said to him, 'You were cruising out there, you would have won if you didn't pull out, rest up.
"He was going great, but with ultras these things often happen."
O'Neil now has 10 UTMB qualifying points and plans to test himself again in the new year.
"Now I am just going to sleep, eat a lot of food and then get back into it," he said.
"It won't be my last one at this sort of distance. I have my eye on a couple of events next year."
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