The Scotstoun athlete will fly Down Under in March in preparation for his first significant test of the season.

The Glasgow 2014 star will be aiming to take advantage of his new training regime. Austin studies applied maths at Stirling University and last year found the intense demands of triathlon training along with studying full time difficult.

Since then he has arranged for a lighter timetable at university, allowing him more time to train.

Students being given classes off might normally prompt a trip to the pub, however Austin uses the time to put his body through its paces to prepare for races — going through an average of 35 hours training per week between running, cycling and swimming.

The 20-year-old is confident his regime will result in an improvement in his times, he told SportScene: “I’m feeling good with the way things have been going. It’s probably a bit early to tell if my new schedule is helping in terms of performance. It is giving me more time for recovery and to focus on nutrition so hopefully that helps come race time.

“I’m looking to establish myself in the senior rankings, my first chance to do that is at the Gold Coast event. I’m racing in Portugal in March, that isn’t as big a race but it will give me a good idea of my progress before I got to Australia.” In such a gruelling sport the number of races a triathlete can take on each year is limited compared with athletes in other sports. With many varying types of races Austin is keen to experiment this year and despite enjoying training and competing he confesses there are times where he wonders why he didn’t pick one out of the three sports.

He explains: “You probably race between eight and 10 races a year, it can be hard to get the right balance. Some people need to race a lot, others need big training blocks.

“There are so many different types of races you can do, I’ll be trying some different ones this year.

“Sometimes I do kind of think why didn’t I just concentrate on one of the three sports because training can be hard but I do really enjoy it at the same time.

“I do try and see friends and family in my spare time, or go out for dinner, it breaks up the monotony of training and studying. But sometimes I’m just too tired after training.”