Scotty Behnke - The Lifestyler Down Under
Scotty’s Story - From Dodgers Hopeful, Overloaded Detective, to Living the Endurance Sports Lifestyle and Thriving Down Under.
The Early Years
As a kid living in Sydney's Western Suburbs at the foot of the Blue Mountains in a suburb called Kingswood Park, just north of Penrith (which is today known as the gateway to the Blue Mountains), my mum and dad worked hard and encouraged me and my sister to try any sport / activity that took our fancy.
My parents grew up in Sydney's Northern Beaches with the ocean and city at their doorstep. They left all that for more affordable Penrith, where they purchased a home in a new built residential community that was bordered by small pockets of social housing. Both primary and high schools were set smack-bang in the middle, accommodating kids from broad range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.
While growing up, we frequented the beach to visit my grandparents and extended family almost every holiday. We played in the sand and learned to navigate and swim safely / competently in the sometimes-treacherous surf. I can recall some moments as I tested my capabilities and boundaries, a literal sink or swim! When the surf was strong, sometimes I would get dumped by waves under the water and then just as I’d find the surface to breathe, the next wave was already crashing down on top of me as the rip tide pulled me down. Lessons learned. I had to fight and swim to safer water or the shallows to gather myself, breathe, and let the heart rate drop.
My first go at sports, between 6 - 10 years old, was soccer. I earned nick name of "Bulldog" for my unique, aggressive slide tackling. I would attack players to prevent them from shooting at the goal. I also took swimming lessons in an indoor pool and I distinctly remember the chlorine stinging my eyes. As my swimming advanced, I spent a number of summers with swim club on Friday nights.
When I was 9, my soccer coach asked if I was interested in playing tee-ball in the summer. With support of mum and dad this sparked and started my journey into a little-known sport of baseball.
I played Soccer in winter and tee-ball in the summer until age 12 when they started handing out red cards for my aggressive style of soccer tackling :). I was encouraged to switch from soccer into Rugby league about the same age I progressed from tee-ball into Baseball proper.
I played two seasons of Rugby league under 12's and 13's. Then I focused on honing my craft in baseball year-round. Mum and dad subscribed to Foxtell tv, which gave me exposure to American Sport, including baseball. My fascination with the LA Dodgers began, setting an aspirational goal to one day make it to the “bigs” and paly for the Dodgers.
Throughout my years in baseball, I had some quality coaches, each with their own style. One thing that I picked up from them all was the discipline to continuously want to be better. One coach designated me to the position of catcher. I asked why I was not going to be the pitcher and I was told, “you are the catcher.” Ok then, let's go all in and try to be the best at it. This particular coach would also give “correction” for errors in training by enforcing pushups, often on bindi-thatched grass in the hot 30 - 35 degree Celsius afternoons of western Sydney. Being a catcher had its own challenges in these conditions, wearing all the required gear. I had to learn to tough it out and it became a badge of honor to do it and be tougher than others. I learned to train the way you want to play and condition the body to perform best on game day.
Baseball became my thing, winter, summer and I played every sport available in high school. My theory was, the more sports I made the team for, I learned different fine and gross motor skills that all could be adapted to life, general experience and challenges. Cricket, touch football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, tennis, badminton, bowling yep had a go at them all. Ultimately it meant I was busy and also got time off lessons to play and train. I was a fortunate type who pretty much just had to listen and do work in class to do what needed to be done to keep grades above average.
Fast forward a little, baseball dreams did not quite work out to make it to USA Leagues, but played the highest grade possible in NSW comp. Just short of my 19th birthday, I moved out of home and started working with a sports store that opened up and fell back into playing senior Rugby League in a country town called Toowoomba, 2hrs west of Brisbane. Tough competition with tough men from the country. Lifestyle as a bachelor, living in a shared townhouse affectionately known as the fun house (party house) I was living that life. Working during the day, training hard but also drinking hard. At the start of my second season in the first minutes of the first game of the season, an awkward tackle dislocated my shoulder and broke the ball of my humerus in half, requiring a full reconstruction. This was the end of my contact sport career.
Commence Life as a Grown Up
I got married within the next few years, working in various sports retail stores and sales rep positions. I dabbled in some social touch football and golf as my activity. My daughter Maddie was born 2007 (now 17) and I was floundering as to what I really wanted to do in life, so I applied for the Queensland Police Service who accepted me into the academy commencing 2009. 6 months at the academy flew by quickly and reignited my interest in physical activity and leading a more active lifestyle. After graduating from the Police academy in November 2009, I was now thrust into shift work.
Shift work and the associated stresses, such as the regular and frequent dumps of adrenaline, being at high-risk-mode all shift, and dealing with mostly the undesirables of society, have serious impacts on the body. Shift work can increase the risk of adverse health outcomes, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal problems. Shift work can disrupt the body's circadian rhythms, which can lead to mood changes, irritability, anxiety, and nervousness. Essentially shift work is not good for wellbeing, and health. On top of that, the food you generally end up eating is fast and convenient, not healthy, as you eat on the run at all hours of the day.
In 2011 my son Fletcher was born (now 13) and I had a couple years of Policing under my belt (literally under the belt with some weight gain and reduced moderate to frequent physical activity:)). My irregular shift patterns, poor diet, and my hobby of home brewing my own beer started to impact my health. Within the next few years, the work intensity and demands increased as I ventured into my plain clothes apprenticeship (after just 2 years on the beat in general duties policing), which is a tenure working with detectives investigating serious violent offences, drug offences, and more complicated criminal acts like robbery, home invasion, etc.. Unexpected, long overtime, short-sleep turnarounds of just 5 hrs before going back at it again, convenient food diet and some Detective culture of work hard and drink sometimes to dissociate from work and sleep. Lifestyle patterns changed, working weekends and shift work while the family were socializing and enjoying themselves as best they could.
2015ish saw the detective lifestyle put strain on family, marriage, and relationships. Being a detective and my type of personality, I believed that I could fix it, just as we do all the time at work, fix things for people in need, distress, and hold people accountable. The ship had sailed on the relationship front, but we kept trying for 2 years, until I made decision that was best for wellbeing of me and the family. This had a massive impact on my wellbeing, stress, and anxiety. Having to now navigate life as separated dad, seeing kids every other weekend, and trying to be the best I could be for them. But things were ultimately going to turn around.
Enter Big-Scary, Type-2 Fun
Enter some local dads who invited me to be part of their team for the 2016 Kokoda Challenge. It’s a 96km trail race (Race ethos in spirit of ANZACS "Courage, Endurance, Mate-ship, and Sacrifice) with 5000m elevation through the Gold Coast Hinterland with a cut off time of 36hrs. This kicked off the start of getting into shape within 8 months of being invited to the event and was a good excuse to focus on positive, consistent exercise while balancing the stresses of work and family. I would often train late in the evenings and early mornings while the kids were sleeping. It was a struggle to jog more than 500m to start, so I implemented a jog-walk strategy with incremental increases as fitness climbed over the next few months.
It was evident after my first long day training with the team that my fitness was far more progressed than the rest of the guys. When the day of the race came, one team member dropped out at the 48km check point. Despite plenty of positive encouragement for the remaining 2 team members, they both pulled out at the 68km check point. I was not done and found another team to join and continue, finishing in 32hrs. My kids met me at the finish line along with my ever-supportive parents and I am pretty sure this is when I decided to do hard things and feats of endurance were my jam! Within a week, I started planning for the 2017 event.
My Kokoda Challenge History
2016 - 32hrs
2017 - 24hrs
2018 - 17hrs 50min (all 4 team members completed race)
2019 - 14hrs 45min 3rd place team (all 4 team members completed race)
2020 - Covid cancelled event
2021 - 14hrs 15min 2nd place (all 4 team members completed race)
In 2017 while living in my sister's house , I started to focus on training, home HIIT sessions, and completing running and trail races of 10 - 25km every few weeks. If I was not working or with the kids, I would train and try to train harder. I was also working with a psychologist at the time to work through the always present demons of feeling like a failure as a father and other things due to break down. Work was still busy, with multiple murder investigations and other serious offences investigated. At some point the psychologist identified that I was using exercise as a form of self-harm. I.E. I had convinced myself that training hard by running 10 - 15km at a tempo pace in the hottest part of spring and summer, often low to mid 30's degree Celsius with 80 to 90% humidity, was increasing and improving my fitness. It was not. I was training right to the point of breakdown, heat exhaustion and body shutting down. I was using it to essentially put all my body functions and thoughts into just surviving. Not smart.
Through further help, support, and engagement I made some changes. Not that I stopped doing hard things, just got smarter and my fitness and mindset continued to grow. I shared my experiences with others to help guide and demonstrate that "it ain't weak to speak" and get professional support especially with the stigma it brings in Policing. I still have my moments and I will have a session or two where I go full send, not to the extent as it did previously but with the mindfulness and being grateful for the tools I have learned over the years. They bring me back much quicker to try and be better for myself, my kids, relationships, and professionally. Still working on it all but always a little better than yesterday every day.
Enter Swim, Bike, Run!
The 2020 Covid pandemic cancelled my originally planned trip to the USA to see my beloved Dodgers play, tour LA and San Francisco by foot. I was really disappointed. I was not in a good place with the covid debacle and have my own thoughts and opinions for another day. What it did do was just before the lockdowns, some local fitness enthusiasts asked me one Saturday morning, "Hey Scotty, what are you up to next Saturday? Do you want to do a half ironman distance Triathlon?" I said, "what's that?," to which they replied and I mulled it over for about 10 minutes and said, "Sure! why not?! Can I please borrow a bike, goggles, and anything else I might need
?" I was thinking that if I can do Kokoda Challenge style events, surely i can do a half ironman. I picked up some gear, went for a quick 5km ride on the bike that Saturday, borrowed a Shiv TT (far different to the mountain bike I had been riding) and went to the local pool. I swam 100m and that’s when it hit me… oh what have i got myself into. I think I swam a total of 500m that afternoon.
I rode a few more times that week and did some short runs off the bike into race day. Hot and humid conditions, I swam and breaststroked my way through the swim course (lifeguards watching my like vultures and sure they were saying this guy is going to drown). I finished the swim just kept making big circles working through the 90km mostly flat 4 loop course, underestimated running off the bike. The 21km was a run and walk. I finished in 6hrs 10mins. This led to another oh, this is my jam and I was all-in from here with triathlon.
I got a refund for my cancelled USA trip, bought a basic Cervelo p3 TT bike and started to research Triathlon. Ever heard of the book "triathlon for dummies?” yep I read it. I entered and raced some Olympic distance and short distance races over the 20 / 21 summer and 2021 saw me have another go at a longer course race, Hell Of the West 100km tri. Still self-training and progressing, but still new to the sport, I finished this race in 5hrs 25min. It was not long after this race I saw YouTube videos about Kona, the Ironman World Championships. Guess what, after watching these on repeat for a few weeks on end, I decided 2022 Cairns Ironman was my next goal. But if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right with a coach to help manage work, required training load, being a dad, and life. Juggling all three around shift work is challenging and adds an extra element to training mostly solo, as everyone is at work most of the time when you can train and weekends when people are out doing group rides, I am at work. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Oh, and toss in building a house in 2021 as well. Another annual event the Hervey Bay 100, completed in 5hrs 10min, first go.
I found coach Dan McTAINSH, an ex Australian Army Servicemen who had a good understanding of juggling training around his service and shift work and family. We planned the path including a few more half distance races Including 70.3 Sunshine Coast 5hrs 25min first effort, Hell of the west 2022 5hrs 5mins through to June Ironman 2022 in Cairns. What a build, I learned a lot and had to adapt to the time required to train and was all in Triathlon mode. Dan had been working on his coaching journey for a few years to date, retiring from his own athletic endeavors. The coach athlete relationship is important, to understand the physiological and psychological effects of shift work, the rise and fall of adrenaline from "hot jobs" at work and the lethargic crash that come from spiking adrenaline multiple times during shift. With feedback and buy in from myself and some review of HRV / Resting heart rate stats, measured against load and sleep quality, I was able to navigate changes to planned training sessions. Sometimes we also decided to train by feeling against the data and hit key sessions. We engaged a nutritionist as well (all-in) for our daily eating and fueling plan. All these things certainly made it easier for me to mix training into my other life responsibilities, discipline, planning, and preparation the night before and just willingness to strive for goals and do hard things always a little better than yesterday. It was a steep learning curve that continues to climb, as life demands, and always adapting to new stimuli.
My First Ironman and USA Adventure
My First Ironman go, I swam as expected with a wetsuit (because of possible deadly jellyfish called Irgigangi) although the water temp was 27 degrees Celsius. It was hot, I rode strong and started cramping at the end of the ride. In t2 I thought that having to go to wee was a good thing. Maybe not on this day. TMI, but I peed bright red, likely blood. I was still excited, a bit anxious, but riding on high of "I will complete this" and the family was there cheering me out of the tent. I saw Coach Dan about 5km up into the run course and I told him what happened. He replied to” just keep going and I will google it!!!!” I hit the turnaround and came back. He checked how I was feeling and he said, “There could be a few things. I advise you to stop, but if you don't, you need to drastically increase fluid and water at every aid station and monitor how you are feeling.” Of course I was not going to stop and he knew it. I persevered and finished my first Ironman in 11hrs 45min. Very proud and this was still just the beginning of my triathlon journey. I monitored my health and with rest and hydration by morning, urination had returned to somewhat normality.
Fast forward to 2023, more races under my belt and the planning began for Ironman Port Macqaurie in May. Mach appeared on Instagram with an application for ambassadors. Sure, why not, I thought, not expecting to get a look in thinking I would have to have more races and faster races on the board. The email came from Dylan Gillespie, asking if I would like to be a part of the Mach Apparel Badass Ambassador Program. Yes, please! And then in March 2023, an email came out for Mach Inaugural Team Camp Bozeman 2023. Let's do it, planning commenced. Ironman number 2, 2023 Port Macquarie, I finished in 11hrs 33min. Then it was off to Mach Camp, where Dylan, John, and the rest of the Mach family and community welcomed me into their homes and lives with open arms and smiles. For this I am so very grateful for. Being able to build these friendships, even from Down under, is something I am most grateful for and appreciate to the fullest daily. I also started working with Brooke @ Grit Nutrition, completing sweat tests and started later in the year working on a new simplified eating and nutrition plan for life and races, which with some very minor adaptations is still working to date.
The trip taught me things about myself that I learned from each and every person, family, and experience I had. Funny story, for those who don't already know, about how I essentially arrested a local offender in my last few hours at John's place before flying out. This occurred as I was typing an emotional heartfelt thank you message to everyone I had met during the previous 8 days. You all had an impact. That message is on Whatsapp Camp 2023 chat.
2023 was also a big year professionally. I decided to move out of Detective work back into General Duties uniform policing trying to get promoted to Sergeant, which is a merit-based resume and interview selection process. Stressful. I ended up winning a promotion a few months After Mach Camp and that is the position I presently hold. Sergeant of Police QLD Police Force Jimboomba Police station. Most of our readers will have seen my journey since on socials.
2024 more races, self-coached this year, another Ironman in Port Macquarie 11hrs 40min this year, different wet drizzly conditions so hard to measure and compare. Working toward Western Sydney 70.3 in September, I got wind of some awesome people we know talking about "Train Anything." A venture Coach John and Coach Dylan who, as you are aware, I have remained in contact with and watched each and every one of you all grow from afar. It was a watch this space deal at this time. Although coaching had not yet formally started, there were a couple of voices in my head leading into the race and week in Sydney. I was drawing inspiration from Coach Dylan, Coach John and the mindset from the Bozeman endurance community and friends who each have been kicking their own goals and achievements this year. I set a new 70.3 PB at Western Sydney, my childhood playground and I will be returning for this race.
I jumped on board the TA Nation train straight after Western Sydney, working with Coach Dylan and Coach John for a 6 week build into Hervey Bay 100. Again, new training stimuli, methods, drills and inclusion of some strength and mobility workouts into Hervey Bay 100. I essentially swam, rode and ran faster average paces across the 100km race today and had shown improvements on previous PBS across all three legs setting a new course PB 4hrs 40min in tough swimming and hot run conditions. TA Nation - kicking goals, working together and striving to be better every day!
2025 is here and did someone mention the inaugural TA Nation Training Camp and Team Race in July 2025???? I hope to meet as many of you whom I have not yet met, develop new mates / friendships, along with the growing TA Nation team and re-unite with the Mach / TA Nation, Bozeman community I already have fond friendships with from down under from my last trip.
TA Nation and families, Let's Go! Help each other strive to be a little better every day, work through the peaks and troughs of life, set goals, seek help, talk, always just a little push when it's hard or uncertain, always learning. All be well and be safe.
See you soon!!!
-Scotty
