He runs across roads and sand dunes, training with the intensity of an Olympics-bound triathlete, a prize fighter ahead of a world title bout. But he's a cricketer.
He boxes, swims and lifts weights as though preparing for battle with a great adversary. But he's playing Bangladesh, the punchline of international cricket.
While the Australian team could, in all honesty, train for this month's two-Test series against Bangladesh by playing poker, Brett Lee will seek the help of former ironman Trevor Hendy to enhance his fitness.
Lee has already shifted his training base to the Gold Coast, undertaking a gruelling regimen that consists of sand-dune running and weightlifting. And this week, the 26-year-old paceman will follow the path of ex-Test quick Craig McDermott and approach Hendy - the four-time world ironman champion and one-time Baywatch cast member - to be his training partner.
"Getting through the last 12 months has been the biggest challenge of my life," Lee said. "That was the most full-on schedule I've ever been a part of, and there's no way I could've got through it if I'd slackened off on my fitness. I was doing a fair bit of boxing and running down at Balmoral, but now I'm going to try and catch up with a few ironmen to up the tempo. I've been told by doctors before that my career might have been in a bit of trouble because of injuries, and I try and do everything from stopping that happening again."
Those injuries, to Lee's back and elbow, seem an age ago - the fact they were career-threatening almost an afterthought for cricket-watchers charting the New South Welshman's recent Ashes, World Cup and Caribbean successes.
But Lee recalls the dire prognoses, the stress fractures that forced him to revamp his bowling action.
"I'm not driven by the fear of that so much as that now, after the last 12 months, I know the positive things you can achieve by being injury-free," he said. "I had pretty serious back problems when I was 18 and 21, and I was told that the stress fractures would mean I probably wouldn't bowl fast again. Then I did my elbow and doctors said I wouldn't throw hard again.
"That's a pretty big statement and it does make you think. You have doubts about what's going to happen to your career. I didn't touch a drop of alcohol for 12 months at one point, and now I go quietly on the drink. I'm training harder than ever."
So Lee, with 119 Test wickets, continues to strengthen a frame that almost conspired against him. "I guess it's no secret they're not the strongest competition in the world," Lee said of the Bangladeshis, who are on an 18-Test losing streak. "But the main danger for us is that this is an out-of-season series, and we don't want there to be any chance of being caught off-guard. I've trained too hard to let myself down now." Leeds: Rod Marsh said on Tuesday England should not worry too much about the next Ashes series in 2005 but concentrate on peaking for the 2007 World Cup.
Marsh, now an England selector and the head of the country's cricket academy, said the England and Wales Cricket Board's mission was to be the best team in five-day cricket in the world and win the World Cup in 2007.
-ALEX BROWN