KURT Fearnley might not have been able to break through for his maiden Boston Marathon victory yesterday, but by the end of the week the Carcoar native hopes he will have conquered an even bigger challenge.

Fearnley is set to return to Papua New Guinea and the Kokoda Track – a gruelling 96 kilometre trail which he took 10 days to crawl in 2009 as he raised money for the Movember charity.

This time around he will not crawl the whole track, he will only tackle the final day, but he plans to be at the Isurava Memorial on ANZAC Day.

It is a location which he associates with fear. He plans to change that.

“I’ll be at Isurava for ANZAC Day. I’ve always wanted to go back to that point because I was so scared – that was my day two – I was so scared at the end of that day that I wasn’t really able to respect it,” Fearnley said.

Fearnley will join a small group of trekkers after the ANZAC Day service who will make their way to Kokoda, the group expected to arrive on Sunday.

Before flying out for Port Moresby, Fearnley competed in the annual Boston Marathon.

He missed the event last year due to the birth of his son Harry, but in three previous attempts had twice finished as runner-up.

Fearnley last contested the event in 2013, crossing the finish line in fifth position as he finished off the podium for just the fourth time in 13 years.

But that was of little concern to him soon after – he was sitting 100 metres away from the finish line when he heard what he thought were thunderclaps. He soon found out the noise was caused by bomb blasts.

The incident shocked the former CSU student and Boston is an event he was keen to support this year.

“New York for me will always be the biggest, but Boston ... you just want to be part of it,” he said.

This year the men who lined up to push the 42.2km circuit alongside Fearnley were greeted by miserable weather conditions.

It meant the pace was significantly slower than in recent years, eventual victor Marcel Hug finishing nine minutes off the course record in a time of one hour, 29 minutes and 55 seconds.

Fearnley did not have the best of days as he started his marathon season, crossing the line in 16th after 1:46.25.

“Cold, wet and windy. This one hurt,” Fearnley tweeted.

After pushing hard in the opening five kilometres – averaging around 34 kilometres an hour – Fearnley still found himself at the rear of the main pack.

He sat in the top 10 at the 20km mark and had improved to ninth by the time he had covered half the course, Fearnley taking 45 minutes, 51 seconds to reach that point.

But by that stage Hug was more than three seconds ahead of Fearnley. The Swiss ace, who had finished fourth in the two previous editions of the Boston Marathon, was able to pull even further ahead of his rivals over the second half of the course to post a commanding victory.

He finished more than six seconds clear of his nearest rival Ernst Van Dyk, a nine-times Boston winner.

“After fourth place last year and now winning this historic mara-thon, I’m really proud,” he said. “I was ready for the rain. I had the rain gloves. So it didn’t matter if it was raining or not.”