Rookie runner to World Champs

HE may live and train in bitterly cold Ballarat but marathon runner Julian Spence is preparing for the hottest race of his life.

Having qualified for next month’s IAAF World Athletics Championships, he’s heading over to Doha, Qatar to race 42.195kms in the searing mid-30-degree heat.

“I ran a qualifying time in Japan earlier in the year, two hours and fourteen minutes, then about a month ago I was selected by Athletics Australia,” Spence said.

Four Australian men ran underneath the qualifying time of two hours and sixteen minutes, but he’s the only guy taking the unusual challenge, alongside two Aussie women.

“We’ll be out in the streets, out on the waterfront of Doha. The course is very small, you can’t go out and hide, it’s a looped course. It’s being run at midnight to try and escape the sun, but it’s still going to be really hot.

“In Ballarat, it’s the opposite way, being freezing cold, raining and windy all the time. Different challenges. It’s hard because you’ve got to keep so many layers on, you’re wet all the time and cold,” Spence said.

“It snowed yesterday, which isn’t great, but I’ll be going away to Europe for a training camp and using a lot of saunas and heat rooms to try and prepare for the heat of the race.”

Spence spends a lot of time running in the bush and out of the elements, but once he gets overseas, his routine will become a little more nocturnal, altering training times to be closer to 12am each day to adjust his body clock.

Taking up running in his mid-twenties after many successful years of local football, he’s excited by the solo nature of the sport and recognises how rare his trajectory is.

“It’s a pretty unconventional way to get into elite running, where most of the people have done it their entire lives,” Spence said.

“It’s a very long term, patient game. Most of the best marathoners are in their mid-thirties, and it’s a culmination of years of training.

“If you don’t go out and train, no one can do it for you. You don’t have teammates that can carry you. You get everything that you want to put in, and if you don’t do it, there’s nowhere to hide.”

Representing Australia was never a dream for Spence, simply because it seemed such a long journey away, but now it’s a reality, it’s a whole new world.

“It’s happened so quickly and it hasn’t really sunk in yet. Everything’s so new to me. I send questions every day because I don’t know anything,” he said.

“Even though I’m probably going to be one of the oldest people there on the team, I’m super rookie.”

Spence expects the audience that comes with wearing the green and gold will be like nothing else.

“Everyone I know is going to be watching this, caring, and there’s going to be a lot more judging on how you perform because you’re the only one in the Australian singlet.

“All eyes are on you and if you have a bad day, it’s going to be the race that everyone remembers you by, and if you have a good race, it could open more doors for me,” he said.

“That pressure is what will drive me to get out when it’s snowing, so it’s really helping because I need to be as fit as possible.”