By NOEL MURPHY
SOME people just like testing themselves, testing their limits, riding the envelope – endurance junkie Ben Henzgen for one.
The Manifold Heights fitness guru loves being out of the comfort zone. Oddly, he’s out of it so often it’s almost become his comfort zone.
Right now he’s exposing himself to sleeping rough, often wet, on park benches and concrete floors as he rides up Australia’s east coast on his bid to set a record for riding around the country on a mountain bike.
Mr Henzgen set out Tuesday last week, aiming to ride 300km a day to circumnavitage the continent in 45 days.
By Tuesday this week he was in Coffs Harbour and powering north to Queensland. By Thursday he was at Gympie, inland of Noosa Heads.
The weather has been warming into the 30s, he’s collided with a car, crashed his bike several times, ridden non-stop through 12 hours of rain and sustained various mechanical failures.
A typical journal entry is enlightening:
“Stayed on the back patio of Narooma Tennis Club last night after 209km with 3625m elevation gain and many steep hills.
“My knee was very sore after two nights sleeping outside scrunched up in a ball to conserve heat; Tuesday in soaking clothes on concrete under the awning of a building under renovations on the main street of Stratford, and Wednesday on the muddy highway shoulder in Alfred National Forest.”
Mr Henzgen’s no stranger to rough rides. He returned late last year from the US where he rode 57,756km in several treks across the country.
He crossed the Rockies several times, the Mojave Desert in 44C and Minnesota in the mid-40s with a heat factor in the 50s while en route to California via Texas.
Henzgen is a jazz musician, a bass player, with an applied science degree in firefighting and a spirit of adventure that’s hard to match.
He travelled to the US four years ago, earning his degree on a music scholarship, writing off a cousin’s car, becoming a college athlete, gathering 23 tattoos, working as a fisherman in Alaska and waking in hospital with his jaw wired shut after a big night out.
