Rocky road, but a great win for Ben Allen

THE SWITCH from surf lifesaving to elite triathlon took another promising step forward after Ben Allen won the National Adventure Racing Championships at Lorne, Victoria on Sunday.

Allen also claimed the overall point score of the Anaconda series and Australian University Sport National Championships for Adventure Racing.

“I’ve done the whole series Gold Coast, Foster and Western Australia and out of all the races Lorne Victoria was the toughest,” Allen said.

Allen set up his win with a strong swim in the 1.9km swim leg, exiting the water in first place.

He then built on his lead in the 13km ocean kayak leg, and by the time he reached Cumberland River Beach, he led by five minutes over Glenn Kirby, with Tristan Read and Steve Kerr a further minute behind and 2006 winner Jarad Kohlar another three minutes back.

“Coming from a surf background, I knew I had to use my strengths to my advantage and get a lead on the other guys,” Allen said.

Kirby then put in a stunning effort in 11.2km coastal/trail and had caught Allen.

Meanwhile Kohlar, a running specialist, was chasing them both down, and had reduced the gap to the two leaders to under two minutes by the time they had all returned to Lorne.

“Towards the end of the run there was 4km of rock hopping it was really hard, I rolled my ankle and lost focus for a bit and Glen came passed me,” Allen said.

“I was able to refocus and get myself back in the race, and I knew if I could do that then, I was in with a chance.”

However, it was Allen who made light work of the transition into the 23km mountain bike leg, leaving well before Kirby and racing ahead.

“I looked behind me and he wasn’t there so I just put my head down and went for it,” Allen said.

“The last couple of weeks I’ve been working really hard on improving my bike leg, and it showed today, all the hard work has payed off.”

It proved to be a decisive break as Allen stomped up the first climb over the Otways, creating a big enough lead for him to enjoy the final 2.3km Tourism Victoria beach run. Allen won in a time of 4:02:06, 7:39 ahead of Kirby, with Kohlar finishing third, 18 minutes behind Allen.