- Australian professional cyclist Brendan Johnston is looking to break the cycling record from Perth to Sydney and raise money for cancer research.
- The current record is held by Austrian ultra-endurance cyclist Christoph Strasser, who completed the 4,000km distance in 6 days, 10 hours, and 58 minutes.
- Johnston’s record-breaking attempt will begin this Saturday on January 10th.
The last few years have seen a few record-breaking attempts to journey from Perth to Sydney, but generally speaking, they’ve been on foot. Unlike the multi-week efforts completed by the likes of Nedd Brockmann and William Goodge, Canberra-based professional cyclist Brendan Johnston is hoping to complete the nearly 4,000km distance quite a lot quicker – on his bike.
Aussie cycling fans will likely already know “Trekky” as a talented athlete who’s competed across mountain biking, gravel racing, and road racing disciplines over the years. On the road, he’s won the National Road Series and the Melbourne to Warrnambool Classic, as well as a bronze medal at the 2023 Road Racing National Championships, and on the mountain bike, he’s won the Cross-Country Marathon National Championships event no less than six times since 2015.
What fans might not know is that at the age of 17, Trekky was diagnosed with cancer, resulting in a hard-fought battle, which he fortunately won. Despite surviving his brush with cancer, the experience was so traumatic that he’s struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder ever since – the mental health condition that inspired the name of his record-breaking attempt, PTSD (Perth To SyDney).
“I had cancer back in 2009, and the experience was very traumatic, but because I was so young, I wasn’t equipped to process it at the time,” Trekky told me. “All I wanted to do was move on with my life. More recently, in the last few years, it’s all sort of caught up with me, and I’ve suffered from some depression.”
“I feel like I’ve been running from that disease ever since, and I feel like it’s these kinds of challenges where I’m actually turning to face how hard it was. It’s something I can control, where I’m choosing to suffer, and it’s a moment for me to learn more about myself.”
In addition to the new record Trekky’s hoping to set, he’s also aiming to raise $50,000 for the charity Tour de Cure that helps fund cancer research and cancer prevention campaigns. Since 2007, it’s raised $158 million for cancer research, mostly through cycling events across Australia.
“To be completely honest, my main motivation is to beat the record, but given the challenges I’ve faced in recent years, I also wanted to raise money for Tour de Cure. It’s a great charity that puts a lot of funding toward both finding a cure for cancer and improving the treatment journeys for those suffering from cancer.”
The current record to cycle from Perth to Sydney is a hard one to beat. It was set by Austrian ultra-endurance cyclist Christoph Strasser in 2017, who completed the 4,000km distance in 6 days, 10 hours, and 58 minutes, during which time he only slept a total of five hours and 45 minutes.
Trekky is taking a slightly less aggressive approach to resting during his attempt, estimating that he’ll stop for around 40 hours throughout the almost week that he hopes the distance will take him. No matter how you slice it, however, beating the record is still going to take some seriously long days in the saddle.
“The first day, we’re planning to cover about 730km over around 18 or 19 hours, but hopefully, day two will be a bit shorter because it’s significantly flatter,” he tells me. “It’s about 710 km, but there’s only about 1,400m of climbing, as opposed to 4,200m on day one.”
His weapon of choice is a good one for such an effort, with his sponsored bike brand, Giant, providing its latest time trial bike, the Trinity Advanced SL, fully kitted out with handlebars and wheels from CADEX. The wind conditions he faces will dictate whether or not he’s able to use the CADEX disc rear wheel, but if things he too hairy, he’s also got a road bike to fall back on.
For the data nerds out there, Trekky’s promising to put some serious power through the cranks as he makes his way across Australia, revealing, “I’ll need to hold around 220 watts depending on the wind, but that translates to roughly 35km/h without a headwind.”
“If we do have a headwind, I can lift that to 270 watts pretty comfortably for at least the first day, but the thing I don’t know is how I’ll go after back-to-back 15 or 20-hour days. That’s something I didn’t do during training because I didn’t want to be cooked when I arrived, so I guess we’ll see how I go.”
As another insight (mostly for the cyclists reading), about exactly what it takes to complete an effort like this is the amount of food Trekky needs to consume to fuel himself. Unsurprisingly, the numbers are massive.
“It’s impossible to consume what you need,” he tells me.
“On the 10 or 12-hour training rides I’ve done, I’ve burned upwards of 10,000 kJ, so each day I’ll probably almost double that to around 15,000 or 20,000 kJ, which you can’t take in. I’ve calculated backwards from a race effort, which is usually about 120g or 140g of carbohydrates per hour, to around 80g per hour, which is hopefully more manageable for my stomach.”
If everything goes according to plan, Trekky will beat Strasser’s record by two hours and arrive at Sydney Opera House before 2 PM on Friday, January 16. In saying that, he’s optimistic about how fast he could go, telling me, “I could smash it, I don’t know. It depends on how much I want to fuck myself, I don’t know.”
If you’re keen to follow Trekky’s journey across Australia, he’s got live GPS tracking for the entire effort here, while anyone interested in supporting his fundraising can find his Tour de Cure page below.
