Cameron Wurf describes himself as an "exercise junkie," and he would likely have to be given his international sporting career spanning over two decades and three different sports.
At 41, he is preparing for yet another challenge at the World Ironman Triathlon Championships in Kona on October 26, all while juggling a professional cycling career with leading World Tour team Ineos Grenadiers.
"It's a real privilege to have had the sporting career that I've had," Wurf told the ABC Sports Daily podcast.
There's a case to be made that nobody in history has found as many different ways to torture themselves physically through sporting pursuits as the Tasmanian has.
Starting his elite career as a rower, Wurf won a world under 23 title in the lightweight coxless fours in 2003.
A year later, he was competing in Athens at the Olympic Games but, during his preparations for the 2008 Games in Beijing, he developed tendonitis in his wrist in 2006.
"Of course, if you've already competed at that level in one sport, you know you've only got one sort of level of sport that you want to compete at," Wurf said.
Wurf made his professional cycling debut with the continental pro team Priority Health Cycling Team in 2007, progressing through the ranks to the Liquigas-Cannondale team where he rode alongside some of the sport's greatest riders, including three-time world champion Peter Sagan and four-time grand tour winner Vincenzo Nibali.
However, with his career drifting a little, Wurf gave it all up for a career in finance.
"It's pretty hard to just drop sport when it's been such a big part of your life," he said.
"So [I] do a couple of triathlons for fun and ended up being good at that, so the finance career got put on hold."
After shifting to become a professional triathlete, the allure of more regular racing on the bike saw him return to the pro tour, accepting an offer from Chris Froome's coach Tim Kerrison to train with the seven-time grand tour winner.
That led to a contract with Ineos Grenadiers, where he combines his triathlon ambitions with riding as key support for their main riders.
This year alone, Wurf raced the spring classics campaign, including La Flèche Wallonne and Amstel Gold, as well as five one-week stage races over the European summer.
Between the Tour of Slovenia and the Czech Tour, he squeezed in a third-place finish at Ironman Vitoria in Spain.
"I've been sort of juggling both sports for the last five years," Wurf said.
"I never imagined it to be much more than maybe a couple of years to see how it worked out.
"And here we are. Five years later. I've been back in the [UCI] World Tour and also doing Ironman triathlon."
Ironman triathlon becoming two-wheeled sporting arms race
Triathletes are a notoriously curious subset of the sporting cohort, masters of not one but three different sports, each of which takes a variety of tolls on the body, particularly in the Iron-distance version of the sport.
An Ironman triathlon requires athletes to swim 3.8 kilometres, ride 180km and then run a marathon back-to-back.
It's a gruelling, brutal, and largely thankless way to earn a crust.
Why then, in his fifth decade, is Wurf putting himself through so much when he has a professional contract in just one sport?
"I often ask myself, to be honest," he laughed.
"I guess, it's just because I came from that background and when I was doing Ironman … naturally, I just gravitated back towards training with all my old cycling buddies to keep the edge in that.
"I guess that then, as I was around them, the conversation kept coming up. Why don't you just do some odd bike races? Surely that would be great for your training? And I kind of thought it would."
However, as COVID hit, Wurf found himself being left behind by the rapidly improving pro long-distance triathlon pack.
"In Ironman, guys just got very, very good in that [COVID] period and very, very specific, particularly the bike," he explained.
"People really targeted that, and targeted what I'd done, and I think used what benchmarks I was setting as sort of exactly that, benchmarks.
"But what they were able to do, was maintain their incredibly high level of running and swimming, so all of a sudden I got left behind.
"So this year particularly, I've had to have a really good, hard look at what I was doing and do things better to try to catch up."
Being a cyclist, it's perhaps not surprising that Wurf has twice broken the record for the 180km bike leg at the Kona Ironman, in 2017 and 2018.
But in the 2022 race, Wurf saw his record crushed by Britain-born Frenchman Sam Laidlaw's 4 hours, 4 minutes and 36 seconds.
Wurf's personal best time for the ride is 4:09:03 and remains the second-fastest of all time.
Of course, a triathlon is not just about being quick on the bike but having the ability to ride 180km — a touch further than riding from Sydney to Newcastle to put it into some perspective — and then punch out a marathon in under three hours.
That being said, the current Kona course marathon record is 2:36:15, set by Norwegian triathlete Gustav Iden on his way to an overall course record of 7:40:24 in 2022.
To put that into perspective, that's the equivalent of running a park run in 18:30, eight and a half times in a row.
Overall, Wurf's best time for the race is the 8:00:51 he recorded in 2022. It was only good enough for 11th place overall that year, a drop from his high-water mark of fifth in 2019, when he raced a 8:06:41.
So fast has the progression in quality and speed been on Kona, completing the course in eight hours would have been fast enough to win every race around the big island prior to 2018.
"When I came into the sport, to break eight hours was a big deal," Wurf said.
"Now we do that on a training day."
Wurf said that the biggest improvement has been in the bike leg — and the stats back that up.
Overall, the marathon time has remained relatively consistent: Mark Allen's 1989 course record of 2:40.04 stood until Patrick Lange ran 2:39.45 in 2016.
Over the past 35 years though, the leading bike time has come down by over half an hour.
"It really does come back to the bike. I mean, that's just got a lot faster, the swim … we're not really swimming any quicker than they were 20-30 years ago," Wurf said.
"And the run, it's really only been this last couple of years that we've seen run times really drop, and that's as guys have got good enough to be able to get through the bike leg at those rapid speeds that we're doing now at a more comfortable level."
One of the biggest leaps forward has been as a result of heat specific training.
"The biggest challenge in Hawaii is that heat, and I think the heat's just not affecting the guys like it used to there. I think we're all more acclimatised to that," Wurf said.
"I think that's been a big evolution of the sport. The nutrition side, but also the ability to deal with the elements … We're getting in the harshest conditions and doing it as if it's optimal conditions, so it's a really exciting time in endurance sport in general."
Wurf looks to Tom Brady to end long drought
An exciting time, but with Wurf starting to push the limits in terms of age, it might be that time is running out for him to make his mark on triathlon's greatest challenge.
The last Australian to stand on the podium in Kona was Sarah Crowley, who finished third in 2019.
The last Aussie man to podium was Luke McKenzie, who finished second back in 2013, while an Australian has not won at Kona since Mirinda Carfrae took out her third title in 2014. Pete Jacobs was the most recent men's champion in 2012.
But that's not how Wurf sees it, looking both near and far for inspiration to finally crack the Kona podium.
"I grew up following [Australian triathlete] Greg Welch's story as a lot of us did. He got close and then he fell backwards, then he got close again, and then finally he won it 1993," he said.
"And I guess I just loved and admired that story … that when you get knocked down, you just want to go back and try again.
"I had that where every year was better and then last time around, which was two years ago now, I slipped back a few places [to 11th].
"You know, that might be enough, especially at my age, to say, maybe it's just not gonna happen.
"But all the people that support me — and Greg's one of them — hardened the resolve to want to fight back and see if you can prove that you can get it done.
"It just happens that this time around I'm going to be one of the oldest that tries to do it.
"But at the end of the day, once we're on the line, no-one cares, we're all competitors and I guess there's probably not a lot of people that would bank on me winning, but they certainly can't rule me out either, so that's, I think, that's a pretty exciting place to be."
Wurf also highlighted American Football quarterback Tom Brady, who continued to excel in the NFL long into his 40s, as a role model.
"Tom Brady and I actually share a birthday, August the 3rd. So I guess there's something in it," he said.
"Obviously, he's had a a crazy, different, stratospheric level of success compared to me, but who knows?
"Maybe I can get my best performance out of myself in these next years."
