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Julian Bennett
Adelaide, South Australia ‘Identify a goal. Do something different. Just get up and out, you’ll feel better for it!’ This month, our Fast Five feature athlete is Julian Bennett, who has been participating in triathlon and endurance events for the past three years. Julian has completed IM Cairns (2019 and 2021) and Iron-distance event “Bootleg Busselton” in 2021 (a locally organised ‘unofficial’ Ironman held in Adelaide), amongst other races. Julian enjoys the endurance aspect of the longer, iron-distance events and counts his proudest triathlon moment to date as going sub-10 hours in Ironman. He’s a member of the Adelaide-based Lakers Triathlon Club, enjoying the community aspect and the variety that comes with training for three disciplines. Julian’s favourite race to date is “Bootleg Busselton”, where he says although only a handful of athletes participated in the locally-organised event (in lieu of IM WA 2021 due to covid border restrictions), the personal and community feel and knowing the volunteers made for a truly unique day of racing! Outside of triathlon (time-permitting), Julian likes to try different sports, having dabbled in rugby, tennis, sailing and kitesurfing in years gone by. Although only training with Coach Rich and T:Zero for a short period of time, Julian is enjoying getting his head around a different approach to training. He’s currently focussed on his ‘A’ Race - Ultraman 2022 – with a warmup stint at Huskisson at the end of this month. All the best, Julian! Why and how did you get into triathlon/endurance/multisport? I have uncles that have run the Himalayas, cycled up Kilimanjaro and all sorts of adventure races and a brother that is always up to something crazy. But for me it all started with drinking with said brother… Usual story – I was reaching forty, and we always try to think up crazy challenges to do in the future...so we made a deal that night that we would do an Ironman the following year (at the time both of us had young families and weren’t particularly fit although we had done mountaineering and half marathons as well as reasonable level team sports etc. in the past.) I trained for a year and completed my first Ironman which was a little bit of an anticlimax in terms of achievement to be honest, so I kept looking for something bigger…. Now, why am I doing Ultraman? Well, that’s entirely Tessa Moorfield’s fault 😉 (NB: Tessa will be our Fast Five athlete for March 2022). What hobbies/activities do you have/do outside of triathlon? I’m a member of the local surf club and do patrols now and then. I’m also involved in a couple of social enterprise/foundations. But most of my free time outside of triathlon and work is with the family, my son and his soccer, daughter and gymnastics and netball and travelling with my wife (and kids). What motivates or inspires you to train/race/participate? To be the best I can be with the resources I have. There are always mini rivalries and match ups that make local races interesting. Have you ever had an apparent training or race day “failure” that has set you up for later success? My Di2 began to fail intermittently on my last ride before I was preparing to pack up the bike for Busselton. It turned out the battery had a poor connection so if it hadn’t happened then it probably would have happened during the race. Effectively, I lost out on one last big training ride, but had a great race in the end. Do you have a race day mantra? Or something you think about to get you through tough periods during the race or calm your pre-race nerves? Not really. I often find myself thinking back to the tough training days and remembering the effort put in to get to this point. For tough periods I usually try to work something out (like a complicated maths problem) as a distraction or go into a zone of just concentrating on my footsteps or something. For Ultraman, I’ve set up a MyCause page (https://www.mycause.com.au/p/276318/ultrahuman-effort-for-purpose) which I think will add an extra motivational dimension.
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