Though he was a few minutes off his winning time from 2013 – yesterday he recorded 75 minutes 23 seconds compared to 72.50 last year – he was a happy man when he crossed the line.

“Last week I did a 170 kilometre ultra-marathon at Mount Fuji in Japan, and it included 10,000 metres of climbing as well, so that’s a pretty heavy workload,” he said.

“But I did the same last year and to be honest those sorts of runs are my bread and butter, lots of hills and so forth.

“It is great to come back and do this sort of run though and push yourself in terms of speed. In trail races you get a lot of natural recovery time down hills, whereas on a flat course like this one you have to keep pushing yourself the whole way.

“There was a big head-wind in sections today and I think with similar conditions to last year, I could have matched the time I did that day, but I was still pretty satisfied with it.”

Davies will now turn his attention to The North Face 100 in the Blue Mountains in a couple of weeks, but already says he wants to return to try and make it a hat-trick of wins in Bathurst next year.

He also has a 10km title to his credit.

In terms of racing yesterday, he had a lonely time of it at the front for a large portion of the run.

In the first five kilometres Davies’ training partner Wes Gibson, along with fellow Bathurst athlete Nick North, kept Davies in their sights, but soon enough Gibson became the first major casualty of the race.

He was forced to pull out with a hamstring injury and, given his focus on The North Face, he wasn’t prepared to take any risks with his fitness.

North went through a fast first 10km and for a long time looked like being a comfortable runner-up as Davies continued to pull away.

A late surge from Goulburn’s Jaemin Frazer though saw North slip to third, Frazer finishing just under four minutes behind Davies and 22 seconds clear of North.

“I tried to stick with Wes for as long as I could and managed to do that but he had to pull up and I was on my own there for a fair while,” North said.

“I was aiming to finish somewhere in the top five and to finish third is fantastic. I thought I had second for a while but got caught in the last two kilometres, I’m still really happy though.

“I’ve had a bit less training lately, I finished the triathlon season then had a week or so off before the Blayney 2 Bathurst bike race and another few weeks off since then.

“The longest training run I’ve done in that time was 15km and I was up against some pure runners today so I was a bit nervous, but now I can have a bit of a rest before getting back into work for the triathlons.”