Tom Dunn is planning one of the toughest trips ever attempted in Australia. To run, swim, and ride 9000km from the furthest point west, to the furthest east. All in the name of mental health.
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"The last couple of years, myself and quite a number of close family and friends have had tough times, and I think that's something we're seeing across Australia. It's been a challenging couple of years," he said.
Dunn hopes to raise $100,000 for Livin, the mental health education charity behind the message "it ain't weak to speak".
"As someone who grew up in a rural town in country Victoria, I think mental health for me was something that wasn't spoken about growing up."
"I think the simplicity of Livin's message is the beauty of it. Sometimes all you do have to do is speak up, and reach out to someone."
His trip will start at Steep Point, near Monkey Mia, 900km north of Perth in WA, and take him south, around the coast.
He'll be riding the whole coast to his hometown in Horsham, in Victoria's Wimmera region, a distance of about 6676km. Then he'll jump off, and swim 280km up the Murray River, before running 1958km to Byron Bay on NSW's North Coast.
"To set out and do a trip that's 9000km, it seems impossible, so the approach for the journey is to treat it day by day, hour by hour. Break it down in to small achievable parts, and let the progress stack itself up."
He expects the journey could take as long as 120 days. With all things going smoothly, he said it could theoretically be done in under 90 days, but with such a huge distance to cover, there is bound to be problems.
"The weather is the unknown factor, and that has me a bit cautious heading into the trip. That's the thing that will affect me the most."
"Crossing the Nullarbor, if I get some headwinds it's going to be a horrible time. Same thing with the swim leg. If I get some cold miserable days, getting into the water and freezing for five or six hours a day is not going to be appealing at all."
Dunn is no stranger to these mammoth adventures. In 2017 he became the first person to stand up paddle the Darling River, a 3800km trip which took him 113 days, and raised $82,000 for Deaf Children Australia.
In 2019, having returned from an unguided hike to the Mt Everest South Base Camp, Dunn set out on a nearly 5000km Quadathlon. Running, swimming, cycling and kayaking from the top to the bottom of Australia to benefit the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School.
That trip, he said, was just the warm-up for his latest journey.
"I went in very much a novice to the world of Triathlon. I'd never ridden a bike more than 40km before I started. I'd done a bit of run training, cutting a few laps around the footy oval. I hadn't done much swim training. I think the furthest I'd ever swam was about 500m in one go."
While he's stepped up his training game for this one, the length of the Triathlon means a lot of the running and swimming muscles he's built up will be lost during the bike leg.
"By the time I reach the run leg, I'll be 60 or so days into the journey, which means any run training I've done will be completely pointless to me. That's one of the things I've learned from the last trip.
"I haven't been for a run for five months now, I've only been cycling and swimming, because they're the only things that I'll get some actual benefit from. I'm banking on the thousands of years of evolution we have, and hoping I can walk and run, let the muscles do what they're built to do."
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Being an entirely self-supported marathon, Dunn has to carry his own bike repair tools and materials, food and water. Add in the regional and remote areas he'll be in for most of the trip, and you start to realise nutrition is one of his biggest challenges.
"It almost becomes an eating challenge, because your body gets to a point where you have to take in so many calories, and your body just wants to send all of your blood to the muscles that are exhausted, and you're throwing food down into your stomach and it's like 'now we have to digest this'. It can really feel like a chore eating on a journey like this."
"It's just a matter of eating whatever I want to eat, because as soon as you stop eating, your body goes into a deficit, and you quickly fall apart. So if there's some tarts or a vanilla slice, whenever jumps out at me at the time, there's a good chance I'll take it apart."
The trip will be the first time Dunn sets foot in WA. "A weird way to have a first experience," by his own admission, but the chance to explore a new part of the country, and meet new people is what he's most looking forward to.
"You can explore these regions, but sometimes seeing the people, and stopping to have a chat is the best way of learning about an area."
He sets off from Steep Point on February 20, and expects to be in the south west of Western Australia after about a week. He invites anyone to join him for a part of his journey, or even just to say hello as he passes through.
"Even if it's just a hi-five or a wave as I go past, that'll brighten up my day, but if i can get people to join me for a kilometre, or even a whole day, that'll make the trip really special."
