LONG hours, stride after stride clocking up the kilometres in training - it may sometimes feel like a tedious process for Hollee Simons but the effort she has put into improving her running is paying off.
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A week after a pair of strong run legs helped her to outright female honours in Maitland, Simons backed up to win the women's long course event at the Bathurst Wallabies Triathlon Club's Christmas round.
While it was an all-round impressive effort as she clocked the fastest splits for each of the legs, it was the 5km run that Simons was particularly happy with.
When Simons first tackled a long course Bathurst race in 2018 it took her 24:45 to finish the 5km, on Sunday she did it in 20:58.
"I'm really happy with my progress, my running is coming along really great and I'm finally starting to see some improvement," she said.
"It's such a long process, but I'm starting to see improvements, everything is coming together and I'm starting to get some more confidence."
Having eased off her training during the week to allow her to recover from Maitland, Simons was hungry for a good time at Bathurst on Sunday.
She was the first to hit the water, covering the 500m swim in 7:44 to emerge from the pool 1:42 clear of her nearest rival.
Simons then powered through the 16km cycle in 25:01 - that's an average of 38.4km/hr - and finished with her strong run. It meant she stopped the clock in 56:38, well ahead of Catherine West (1.11:25) and Fran Grady (1.13:23).
She enjoyed the victory just as she enjoyed seeing the strong turnout for the event.
"It was nice to have a lot of people out here before Christmas, so I was pushing pretty hard. It was nice to be able to go a bit shorter and push harder," she said. "It's nice to have a good bunch of people here and especially some of the young juniors that are giving it a real go - that brings up the level of racing."
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