Challenge Wanaka 2018: Unfinished Business

The Friend of ours who has got in firmly set in her head that she wants to do the Wanaka Challenge in New Zealand, has had a while to think about our comments on the subject that she had requested from us. Getting this idea into her head is not quite as mad as it seems. She has competed in a race of this distance before; In 1998 Roth Ironman a group of us from Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club as I think we still were at that time, made the journey to Germany for that event. Photo below.

This young woman had bowled along to meet us at one of our club swim session and had started to join in with our bike and run training, when they fitted in with her life then as a police officer. She lived just around the corner from us. I remember that I had tried to get her to settle in to doing spring or standard distance races and she gave me an old fashioned look now and again until one day in the changing room she stood squarely in front of me and said something to the effect of, “You don’t understand Daf, do you, I want to do an Ironman, that is what I want, that is what I’m aiming to do”.

Jumping straight in to triathlon and aiming first and foremost for the hardest distance race has been done before but is not the everyday triathletes’ route. Most will do a sprint distance or three, then a standard distance, then maybe the next season, having had a super time at a dozen events of all sorts, might set their cap at a middle distance race and then after that go for an Ironman event. 

1998 is a long time ago, nineteen years actually. That is a long time and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge in that time. Some of the more barmy of us have been doing triathlon all of that time since then. Poor quality photo below with Steve, taken off our wall.

We are talking here of a woman who has good sports background, originally as a good golfer. She still is very much that. She is an active person and when we met last year, she looked more or less the same as she did nearly twenty years ago, which is more than I can say for myself, but then I am knock, knock, knocking on seventy eight’s door. She is hard working and always has been and as you can imagine from what I have already said about her, can dig her heels in very firmly and although she will listen to advice, she will chew it over and make her own decision.

She has decided she wants to take another shot at the long distance and since it is in New Zealand and she lives and works in New Zealand. Why consider anything other than the Challenge Wanaka event.

She has asked for our opinion and our honest thoughts. She has read them all politely and still come storming out as determined as ever with that race down as the direction to which she is headed.

 

Of course it will be hard, there is a long way to go, but she has been biking several times a week and building up the training slowly including a bit of boxing and weight training in the gym, a fit, strong willed woman for starters. There is a fair amount of time to the race which is on February 17^th 2018.

We have set down what needs to be done as an absolute minimum to get to the finish line and hope that in time, she will in time knuckle down to something more sensible, that will get her to that line smiling, jumping and whooping and feeling good about herself.