Saturday, March 30, 2024

Rapidly racing ahead

Avatar photo
At only 28 years old, Bobby Dean is one of New Zealand’s top 10 adventure racing and multisport athletes and also owns a 60ha dairy farm at Maketu in Bay of Plenty.
Reading Time: 4 minutes

When he left school, Bobby was keen to pursue the dairy farming life he had grown up with. He was given his first farming job by his parents, who employed him as a farm assistant-2IC. While working for them he completed PrimaryITO Level 3 – Agriculture.

After two seasons farming, a change of jobs led Bobby to driving a silage harvester in the United States for five years and becoming 30kg heavier than healthy.

“I was overweight and very unfit after five years of sitting in tractors. I struggled to run two kilometres,” he says.

Bobby had always been a good runner through his high school years but “after leaving school in 2005, I just stopped running and never really did any sport until 2011”.

He came back to NZ to manage the family farm in November 2010. Weighing 105kg at 167cm, he saw the need to get fit. So he set himself a goal of running his first marathon. He bought a bike to help him to get fit, and completed his first Rotorua marathon in April 2011, finishing in 3 hours, 36 minutes.

“That was the hardest marathon I have done to date. I lay down at the end of the finish line, feeling the pain run through my arms and legs.”

He has done a few more since, improving his time to a personal best of 2 hours, 42 minutes at the Rotorua Marathon.

But Bobby’s goals for fitness didn’t stop there. He decided to play club rugby over the winter. The next summer, he was running as well as cycling.

“For some reason I decided that I would have a go at a triathlon.

“When I turned up, I looked around at everybody in their flash lycra sports gear. All I wore was a pair of bike shorts and a T-shirt.”

One thing led to another and the following year he did a few more triathlons, which led him to the half-ironman event – a long-distance triathlon.

“I started to buy some gear so I felt like I fitted in with all the show ponies. Now, I was pretty much hooked on the buzz of wanting to be faster.”

The following year he did more half-ironman events, but the ultimate goal was to complete the big one – the full ironman. After conquering the full ironman in March 2014, he was determined to do it again to get a better result than his first.

But then came the opportunity to buy a farm.

Bobby with Team Bivouac at the finish line of Godzone 2015.

Competitors are likely to spend a fair amount of time paddling in GODZone, and they might have to swim across deep rivers at any time of the day.

The team would choose when and where they wanted to sleep.

“We got about 10 hours sleep, completing the race in just four of the seven days allocated, and we ended up placing fifth.”

The clock and the race don’t stop until the whole team crosses the finish line.

“Some teams can take up to seven days to complete the course and others might not finish, because of injuries or fatigue.

“Not many people would call GODZone a holiday, but I loved it.”

GODZone 2016 was Bobby’s second go at an expedition-length race, with his first one in Australia in 2015. That race covered 700km around the Queensland tropics.

“It was hot, and very challenging. You never know how your body is going to respond when going into the first race”.

His team had about 10 hours of sleep over the course of the 6.5 days of racing to get to the finish line, where they came in third.

He is proud to say that he is ranked in the top 10 in the New Zealand’s multi-sport scene and at the top of his age group in half ironman.

But success in his sporting events is not all that Bobby has been commended for. In the 2014-15 season he was recognised by Open Country Dairy for achieving the lowest somatic cell count, with an average of 46,000.

It is no surprise that Bobby loves the challenge of trying to balance the daily demands of the farm, and the intense training schedules the big events require.

“The biggest challenge can quite often be the challenge of sleep deprivation.”

As expected, injuries have also been a setback for Bobby on his journey to becoming a multi-sport athlete.

“Injuries and setbacks are so mentally challenging. I want go out and train harder and get better, but have to rest up and then I lose fitness.”

After recovery Bobby always gets straight back into training.

His coach, Chris Willet, sets his training routine with a schedule ranging from 10 hours to a maximum of 20-25 hours a week. Being a one-man band on a farm with varying workloads plays a big part in how much training he can do.

“I find it easy enough to make sure I get an hour in every day, including the weekend. One day a week, I also try to get some training in between milkings which is normally a bit longer”.

Bobby and his partner Anna are going to race together in the World Adventure Racing Champs held in Australia in November.

“We have put together a new team with some experienced racers, so now we need some sponsorship for that”.

Bobby says, he loves racing and training with Anna.

“It’s a great way to spend time together off the farm.”

Week day schedule example:

3:45am Wake up
3:55am Out the door to get cows in and milk
7:20am Finish milking
7:30am Training of some sort (eg run 12km)
8:30am Breakfast-organisation planning
9:00am General farm jobs
12:30pm Home for lunch-nap
2:15pm Farm jobs
2:30pm Get cows in and milk
4:45pm Finish milking
5:30pm Snack-training (eg 60km bike ride)
7:30pm Cook dinner-eat, stretching.
9:30pm Sleep

Top achievements:
1st Rotorua Half Ironman 2014
2nd Tauranga Half Ironman, NZ Half Ironman Champs 2015 (25-30 age group)
3rd NZ Ironman 2015 (25-30 age group)
1st NZ Xterra champs 2015 (25-30 age group)
2nd Bivouac XPD adventure race Australia 2015 (team event)
3rd Motu Multisport Challenge 2015
1st Tauranga Half Ironman, NZ Half Ironman champs 2016 (25-30 age group)
11th Coast to Coast 2016
5th GODZone 2016
5th 3D Multisport, NZ multipart champs 2016

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading