Over the descent down the famous stretch of tarmac the Cherrybrook runner reclaimed the lead from home city hope Nick Zawadski and never looked back.

Oakes won the second edition of the punish in a time of 23 minutes and eight seconds.

That put him clear of a three-man battle pack between Patrick McNamara (23:45), Zawadski (23:46) and Dani Andres (23:58).

Oakes said his energy conservation up the climb paid off.

“I didn’t know who would be turning up today so I just went out there to see how I would go. I tried to stay in a pack going up the hill because I didn’t want to push myself out of that red zone too much,” he said.

“I stayed in a pack of four people and we helped to pace each other. Nick put in a surge to get the King of the Mountain but on the descent I just let go and ran as fast as possible.”

Zawadski had edged out Oakes by a second at the McPhillamy Park split but within the next kilometre the latter was throwing down a challenge to his rivals.

None of them matched it.

“I did look back a couple of times when I could catch my breath,” Oakes said.

“I saw around the four to 4.5km I had a bit of a lead and I tried to hold onto that for as long as I could.”

By the time Oakes was rounding the last turn the chasing group were running under the pedestrian bridge at Rydges Hotel.

It left an exciting three man fight for the silver between Zawadski, McNamara and Dani Andres.

Andres looked the man to beat coming past the pit lane entry.

However, Andres had used up his energy reserves and dropped out of contention on Pit Straight to make it a duel to the line.

It was McNamara who had the legs to run down Zawadski by a single second.

Simon White completed the 3.3km descent in 10:30 – three seconds quicker than Oakes and faster than any other runner – to shoot up from 15^th into fifth place.

Mark Rosetto, Dean Windsor, Jack Reen, Jack Robinson and Chris Jackson rounded out the top 10.