In 2006 when Brendan Johnston caught wind of a monumental challenge being undertaken by local cyclist Richard Vollebregt, an attempt to top the fastest known time for the 4,000km journey from Perth to Sydney, it captured the imagination of the then 14-year-old. Now, 20 years later, he has set off on his own attempt.
"It's just sort of been in the back of my mind since then," Johnston told Cyclingnews from Perth in the days before setting off.
"Then, I guess, two or three years ago, I looked at what would be involved and then it was a matter of finding a time and being in a place with the resources to actually go and do it."
Latest Videos From
Plenty has changed for both the record and Johnston in the intervening years and now the opportunity exists for the 34-year-old to try and deliver a new fastest time. Currently it sits well below Vollebregt's record, which took the mark down to eight days and nearly 11 hours.
Now, the Road Record Association of Australia has Christoph Strasser as the holder of the fastest known time, currently six days, ten hours and 58 minutes. This is the supported record time the now-professional gravel racer, who is once again part of the Life Time Grand Prix series in 2026, is striving to beat as he focuses on a target of six days and nine hours.
Johnston has a record in long races – being a six-time Australian Marathon Mountain Bike national champion, winner of the Melbourne to Warrnambool, the Dirty Warrny and also a top five finisher at Unbound Gravel 200 – but the ultra-endurance sphere is a new challenge. Still, for the rider who in recent years has found his path into professional cycling by evolving into a top gravel racer, the scale of the task is a big part of the appeal.
"I find myself constantly looking for challenges that I can use, even metaphorically, as turning back on some some struggles that I've had and I think I find the most out about myself when I'm presented with challenges, or set myself new challenges," said Johnston.
"And that's goes for racing as well. That's the reason I still strive to race, is to challenge myself and learn more about myself. And to combine it with a good cause, like the Tour de Cure, that's obviously close to my heart," he added.
The ride will be raising funds for Tour de Cure, which helps fund cancer research and cancer prevention campaigns, and it also will be raising awareness of the challenges that can come after, with Johnston labelling his ride 'PTSD' both as a play on Perth to Sydney and on the abbreviation for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
He hopes to raise awareness of this as part of the potential aftermath of cancer treatment and also something that he had to grapple with in recent years after being diagnosed with cancer as a teenager.
Back when Vollebregt's effort first caught his attention, Johnston was morphing into an impressive multi-discipline racer with dreams of going to Europe as a professional but life took an unexpected detour when he was hit with a testicular cancer diagnosis at 17.
"Being 17, 18, years old, I was just in a rush to get it over with. I sort of hated that period of my life and, I don't know, felt embarrassed or ashamed to have to be in that spot when you're supposed to be kind of in your prime as a teenager. I just really wanted to power through it and put it behind me," reflected Johnston, who said while he had plenty of support, he really didn't know that he was personally equipped to deal with it at the time.
"I rushed on with things, and just never gave it the time of day, and then sort of later on I guess I felt like I was sort of running from the disease," he continued, adding that in the last three to five years it had caught up with him. "I think with challenges like this, I feel myself turning around and kind of facing it."
Johnston took off in the very early hours of Saturday morning from Cottesloe Beach, with his parting words including "it's going to be one hell of a ride".
To beat the record, Johnston will need to ride more than 600km a day as he heads out from Perth, where the Australian Road National Championships are currently underway, before heading east across the long and hot Nullarbor Plain before briefly dipping into the north of Victoria. He will then tackle the final thousand kilometres through inland New South Wales before finishing on the coast in Sydney.
Johnston is planning to take a slightly different approach to the current holder of the fastest known time, Strasser, as while a factor in long distance records can often be very little sleep, that's the element that Johnston is looking forward to least. "I operate as a professional athlete and sleep is pretty crucial to performance," said Johnston.
Strasser, he said, "barely stopped", with an analysis of his figures putting the total stoppage time at about seven hours, though Johnston is planning for about 40 hours stopped in his carefully mapped out day-by-day plan to deliver a target new FKT of six days and nine hours.
"Given the test runs that I've done, it's shaking out as pretty realistic, which is really nice. It's going to depend on the window, for example the wind's not looking very good at this point, but I don't know, it kind of excites me a little bit to have a bit of a rough conditions," said Johnston who is proving once again that he is never one to shirk a challenge.
And that is a good thing given he'll have 4,000km of them to overcome this week.
You can follow the tracking of Brendan Johnston's attempt as he progresses, and donate to his fundraising efforts for Tour de Cure.
