Worth it? Taupo, New Zealand has a long history of hosting Ironman. The town breathes this triathlon event and locals come out in full force. The event had by far the best volunteers I’ve ever encountered. The race centers around Lake Taupo, a crystal clear, fresh water lake. Flood gates are closed during he 1 loop 3800m swim, but there is still a little bobbing, although most of up and down motion is mitigated by the route which is perpendicular to the currents. To T1 the run is long through the boat dock parking lot and there is a full flight of stairs before the green. Bike is 2 loops out and backs towards the farmland. Most notable are the rolling hills, tailwind out and headwind back, and the bumpy road conditions. Run is 3 loops along the lake front with a lot of elevation and downhill for an Ironman. The run is pretty exposed, but throughout the whole time spectators line the streets and cheer you on. Ultimately, you run down one of the best non-worlds gauntlet I’ve experienced to date.

2019 brought around a lot of changes. I dived head first into building a relationship with a coach. It was time for me to entrust someone else with the larger picture and dial into my day to day execution. With the new year, I joined Purple Patch and Matt Dixon’s coaching philosophy. I had a protracted timeline before my first big Ironman this season. Within 2 months I had to get to know my coach, get my bike fit, buy my first TT bike, figure out what gear I was missing, and train for Ironman New Zealand. Fast forward, I was still grasping the cadence and communication lines with my coach as I was getting my logistics pat down for travel in a few weeks time.

A couple weeks before the race and upon opening the athlete guide, I had my first freak out. There we 8 girls in my age group. Almost too much of a coincidence, one of my competitors followed me on Instagram during the same time and added fuel to my freak out sess. Ugg social media these days.

I was also expecting my new old TT bike to show up. I decided to buy a second hand TT bike as I have a really long torso (which also means I have short legs) and apparently only fit on 1 bike on the mass market. After scouring the forums for deals, I settled on a Trek Speed Concept from the now defunked Timex Team. It was a beautiful pearl 2018 frame with navy accents. I paid and decided to buy the shipping label with insurance up to the 2nd hand price I paid because the seller didn’t seem to really understand the necessity of insuring over the amount. He mentioned it was still under his property insurance. I should’ve pushed harder.

Upon purchasing, I was out of town and had to manage the logistic of making sure the bike was shipped out and that it then made it to my bike fitter. Chasing down 2 parties ended being difficult as the box arrived at the bike fitter shop right before he was leaving for a trip. My fitter called me after a couple days of me chasing him down. He had major concerns about the condition the box arrived in. One side was completely crushed, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he assembled the bike. I waited 7 days in agony. He returned to New York City to build the bike and I was running out of time only about 1.5 weeks out from leaving for New Zealand. My fitter mentioned that at first glance, the impact didn’t seem to hit the central part of the bike. I felt like I had some hope. After the frame was built, he then called me to break the news. The bike was completely unusable. In other words, he would not let anyone ride this bike, even with a carbon repair. Bikeflights/Fedex basically threw the box off a trunk, crushing the backend of the box. Their mishandling cracked the rear triangle and because the rear triangle takes a lot of load, even a repair doesn’t fix the compromised structural integrity of the bike. This was the TT I needed to race. I was absolutely devastated. To make matters worse, when I contacted the seller for pre-packing pictures and property insurance. He proved his negligence and didn’t take the photos of the bike in the box pre-shipment that I explicitly asked for beforehand. I was fuming as that was a completely rookie mistake, almost non-excusable as he was very well situated in the triathlon community.

I realized my best supporter was my fitter, who felt really bad about the luck I had. He knew Bikeflights had already destroyed another bike a year beforehand. He did his best to provide the market value to help me claim the insurance. Of course, that was a lot of time and energy and after the fact I wished I insured it up to the MSRP, rather then the price I paid.

Well, nothing I could do, so I beg my fitter to slot in an appointment to get me refitted on my road bike with aero bars. I didn’t have any other options. This race may not be willled.

The nice icing on the cake was that none of my necessary packages arrived either. Aero helmet missed delivery promise and tubes and nutrition got lost in the mail. Just my luck.

Woossssahh. Motto of this race was definitely control what you can control.

Off I went to New Zealand. The trip was 30 hours of travel tome to get to Taupo, New Zealand. I would fly 15 hours from JFK to Hong Kong to redevouz with my mom. We would then fly 10 hours from Hong Kong to Auckland.

The drive from Auckland to Taupo we broke into two parts, stopping halfway in Te Kuiti. My mother, who I see a couple times a year, had our heart to hearts early on in the trip. I had my short learning curve of driving on the left side of the road and roundabouts. There were some missed turns and hitting the wipers instead of the signal button, but I got the hang of it within the first couple hours.

My first impression of North Island was that the scenery was very similar to middle California. I felt right at home. I wanted to see the Waitomo glowworms, hence the 1 night pitstop, but after so much travel I wanted to just enjoy the Airbnb I booked. It was a cute cottage with a back garden and antiques strewn around. The closet town definitely represented the country side. We had a brief, pleasant stay with nicely decorated rooms, homemade muffins, and fresh eggs.

The next morning we headed off towards Taupo. Most the drive was rolling hills and single track highways. I did get pulled over by the NZ police for driving too slow on the highway, which definitely was my introduction to NZ driving. I honestly didn’t know the speed limit (I’m American, not sure how fast I’m going in kilometer) and traffic was nonexistent. The cop was super nice and just let me know to speed up a bit.

Pulling into Taupo, I rounded the last hill and see the massive lake. This town was spectacular. The Ironman M Dot banners were already up. Town central was a shopping center with a bunch of shops and restaurants.

My mom and I checked into Garage-mahal or the temporary garage space we would be living in for the next week. Not without some mishap as I parked in the driveway next door and seemed like I was breaking into the house, until the owner pulled up and kindly let me know it was the house next door.

The next couple days were meticulously planned out: drop off bike to be built, get a massage, pick up registration packet, and slot in my needed workouts. Most notable for race prep was a Women for Tri breakfast with a handful of pros. I had a great time speaking to the other female age-groupers that made up ~20% of the ironman competitors. It was also a female centric event with almost all female attendees.

I felt in the flow and just waited for race morning.

There was a calmness to race morning. Not a frenetic as Taiwan for sure. I shuffled into transition to prepare my bike. Somehow lost my mom during the herds of people, so I opted to head towards swim start.

I was appropriately greeted by the haka dance to sanction the race. To bless us warriors on the journey ahead. It was a ceremonious morning, although I was pretty nervous about the mass start in Lake Taupo. When I finally got into the water, I positioned myself as far from the swim line as possible to take a diagonal path to the first buoy.

And the cannon went off. The water was fresh and clear. It was calm enough that I barely needed to sight as I just kept swimming. Out of the water, there was quite a distance to back to T1. Unfortunately, the path makes me climb a full flight of stairs to enter transition.

In and out with the bike I went. I knew I was behind as usually from the swim, so I started pushing to a good effort on the bike. Going out on the first loop, tailwinds inflated my speed on the bike and I was getting my muscles loose for the ride. I was a little wary of left IT stinginess, but hope I could ride it out. Once I whipped around the turn around, the rolling hill landscape was less forgiving. I came head onto a headwind and just pedaled to keep momentum. 3 hours later, I went through a series of turns and merges to go back onto my second loop. This time knowing a bit more what to expect from the elements.

After 6 hours on the bike, I finally got off and hobbled my way through T2 and onto the run. I tried pushing through transition, as hey it's free speed. And I felt great on the run. The run was another series of rolling hills. It was an extremely exposed out on the asphalt then looping back along a walkway towards town. After the first couple miles, I'm faced this big hill then do some hopscotching up and down hills through the first loop.  I was trying to stay steady the whole run, but was already pounding coke and water pretty early into the marathon.

I hit the marathon wall partly through my third lap. My skin stun from all the sun exposure and achiness and mental fatigue set in. I zeroed in on putting one step in front of another and leaning into the cheering from the crowd in New Zealand. They came out in full force with cheering pots and pans, little kids dressed up and giving high fives, along with non-sanctioned aid stations. I just kept my head up and kept moving, walking the uphills and aid stations when I needed to.

By the time I rounded into the gauntlet for the finish line, I figured I was mid-pack given how many girl that I guess were in my age-group that I passed on the bike and run. I bolted down the red carpet in arguably the best gauntlet experience ever. The speakers were on full blast as Mike Reilly shouted, "You are an Ironman!"

I still figured I finished mid-pack as my mom mentioned she saw some younger looking girls finish before me. When I asked for my phone, I was confused why everyone was talking about Kona and Hawaii. I thought, "but I didn't get the slot allocation." I asked my mom for the tracker and when I pulled it up it showed 1 out of 5. I was screaming and yelling in disbelief as I said, "Oh my gawd, I'm going to Hawaii!"