Hell Of The West - 1st

Hell of the West... the name itself should give you an idea of what you are in for. This race has crowned champions such as Luke Mckenzie and Pete Jacobs and this year it was my turn to give this infamous race a go in an attempt to add my name along side these true champions of the sport.

I drove to the race on Saturday morning and really must say a big thanks to Bevan and Gill for giving myself and my partner Bec a place to stay. Seeing the course the day before I honestly didn't really give it a second thought as the swim was in protected river waters, the cycle held on flat roads and the run on what looked like mostly shaded footpaths. The plan was to go hard from the start, get a good gap in the swim and never look back until the finish line.... this was NOT to be!

Race morning started with a 3:30am wakeup for a 5am swim start in the pitch dark. I started hard and within the first few meters had a good gap which keep increasing with every stroke. Being that it was so dark the only thing keeping me on course was the boat in front which had a bright orange light on the rear. I emerged from the water with around a 1 minute 30 second lead and felt confident in my ability to extend this lead by a few minutes over the next 80km ride. I rode within my set wattage/power meter limits but just before the turn around was surprised to see 5 other athletes hot on my heels. I stayed in 2nd after the 40km u-turn and really struggled to hold pace with Nick Hull driving the pace up front. My legs were hurting but I keep on top of my nutrition and stayed in the aero position onboard my S-Works Shiv for most of the ride back into T2.

I hit T2 feeling quite average with Lindsey Wall having ridden about 30 seconds into us in the final stages of the bike leg. Nick Hull went on the charge early and I had to fight just to hold 4:45min per km pace over the first of the 3 run laps that made up the 20km run leg. By the first lap Nick had chased down Lindsey and now had a good 1 min & 30 sec lead over myself. Despite this gap I still kept telling myself that I was still racing for the win and that I COULD pull back the time over the last 2 laps. I fought hard over lap 2 and managed to get the gap down to just under a minute heading out onto the final lap. This is where I knew I had to kick it up a gear and made myself run at 3 minutes 30 seconds per km or below in a last ditch attempt to close the gap. I could see Lindsey and Nick were starting to really hurt from setting such a fast pace early on and I had to make the most of this opportunity. I finally caught the two front runners with just under 3 kms to go. I kicked at km 18 and put in a big effort (3.20min/per km pace) and followed it up with a 3 minutes 15 second at the 19 km mark to break away and hit the finish line totally spent physically, mentally and emotionally to take the title of 2014 Hell of the West winner!

This was without question one of the hardest races I have done and with the body only giving me so much the mind had to be strong and to be honest I really believe that this was the only thing that got me the win today. 

1 Sam Betten   03:42:30 Open 1 Male 1 00:28:05 02:04:09 01:10:16
2 Lindsey Wall   03:43:00 Open 2 Male 2 00:29:44 02:01:51 01:11:24
3 Nicholas Hull   03:43:19 Open 3 Male 3 00:29:47 02:02:10 01:11:21
4 Richard Pearson03:47:02 Open 4 Male 4 00:29:33 02:02:53 01:14:36
5 Daniel Stein   03:48:45 Open 5 Male 5 00:30:03 02:02:19 01:16:22
6 Adam Gordon   03:50:14 Open 6 Male 6 00:33:38 02:02:31 01:14:04

Link: FirstOffTheBike.com race report: CLICK HERE

Next up Challenge Half Batemans Bay.... stay tuned