New Zealand Ironman....70.3 Part 2

Friday March 2-
Today we woke up and went to go check in our bikes. I was starting to get really excited for the race. When we went to check in our bike the volunteers were amazing! They met you at the entrance and they gave you a personal tour through the transition area. They also photographed our bikes. I got so many compliments about my bike. I might not be fast but I was going to look good!!!

After we checked in our bikes, we had to go get our bags ready for the transitions. This is very stressful especially when you have no idea what the weather will be. You have to pack for the unexpected, but you only have a small bag to put everything in. I just jam everything in, this time it included my wonderful sling!

Next it was off to some natural hot springs!

After the hot springs we went back to the hostel and that is where we heard the good news! :( The IRONMAN had been cancelled!!!! They said there was a tropical storm coming our way and there was no way it was going to miss us. It took up the whole island!! My heart just sank, so much training and effort. I will admit I did cry, but so did half the athletes. What can you do though, we have no control over the weather. The Ironman staff was wonderful, they said they were going to put on a half the next day, Sunday!!!

So what do you do when you find out your race of the year has been cancelled eat TIP TOP ICE CREAM and FISH AND CHIPS!!!


Saturday March 3-
All night long I was thinking, I hope when I wake up it is horrible weather because I will be really mad if it isn't. We woke up to NO WIND OR RAIN! I started getting upset, that they cancelled the race so early. Although the day did get worse as it went on, that is what we heard. We really didn't want to stick around and just sulk, so we headed south. We went to Napier and Hastings.

Napier Highlight:
Sheep skin factory
Opossum Museum
Waterfall- can't remember the name
The Napier sheep skin factory! I came here seven years ago and it was still just as good! We bought several sheep skins and a great steering wheel cover.
Opossum World, a great opossum museum. New Zealand has a big problem with these critters, so why not have a museum for them!

Getting out my anger at the Opossums! I felt like I needed to shot something after the race of my year was cancelled!
That is what I was shooting. They might look cute, but they are NOT
Ladd and my Dad showing us there tough man faces. I think my dad might have won, Ladd doesn't have a mean bone in his body!!
The weather getting worse as the day went on. Oh, and that is my new REALLY expensive jacket!

Hastings Highlights...well highlight no S:
Ice Cream- Rush Munro's
There is really nothing better then New Zealand ice cream!!!

Sunday March 4-70.3 day:
We had to re check in our bikes, because of the bad weather the day before we had to pick them up. That morning it was still windy, but the race was on! We did the bike check and then sat around and froze for the next hour or so! It was sooooo cold that morning and I wasn't prepared. All of my cold weather stuff was in my special needs bags!

With about an hour left before the race it was time for the first event, putting on the wet suit. I hadn't put on my wetsuit since october 2011! It was an experience, but it kept me warm!!!

Next it was off to the swim start. This is when I started to get really nervous. The men started 5 min before the women, so that gave me 5 more min to talk my self out of swimming! Luckily my mom was with me to calm my nerves. I was so scared that my shoulder would not hold up, even with a half Ironman swim. I hadn't swam since the injury!

(FYI- my dad decided to not race. He doesn't like racing on Sunday, so instead he saw a start and then went to church. )
Women waiting to start the race!
Getting out of the swim. Ladd always says I don't look happy, so I was really trying!!
The race was sponsored by Nutri-Grain, so while we were suffering the spectators could go to the cereal bar. There is the man that was suppose to be racing eating cereal!

No pictures of me on the bike. That is a task that Ladd has not quite mastered, maybe a few more races and he will get it! I felt great in the swim. I never once felt my shoulder. My time wasn't great, but no ones was. It was pretty choppy! The bike was awesome. I love passing people! I am such a slow swimmer I only have 5 men pass me and not a single female, but I passed tons!!! The only thing that stunk, well there were two things, the road was really bumpy and the wind the last 20Km. There were times I was going 8mph! Oh well again, nothing you can do about the weather!
Just off the bike! I felt really good!
Yelling at my mom who was about 30 sec in front of me. I had been talking about how fun it would be to finish with her, but I don't think she felt the same way! As soon as she saw how close I was she took off. (That is my mom for you!!!) She didn't stop for anything! (PS- mom if you are reading this you time is ending, I will beat you this year!!!)
Just about to finish. It was by best run at any 70.3!
There we are. She ended up beating me by 6 mins, but come on look how buff she is!
I left my timing chip in T1, so as soon as this picture was done I was running around trying to find it. Luckily I had my Garmin time and they took that!
Here is the best husband ever! He makes a great cheerleader!!! Overall it was a great race, or course I would have loved to do a full, but you take what you can get! The volunteers were really amazing, I can't say enough good things about them! I would definitely suggest this race.

After the race it was off to another waterfall. Huka Falls
The whole crew!!! Now it was really time to eat ice cream, no more race!!!

Next up part 3 stay tunned!

New Zealand Ironman.....well 70.3

NEW ZEALAND PART 1 OF 3

I have been planning this trip for year now. Just like anyone training for an Ironman, your life becomes all about your race! You think about times, you train your butt off, you lose sleep, you obsess about your transitions (weird but you think how you can change faster), you spend all your money on crazy things that might make you a tenth of a second faster, and sadly your family can suffer. I was so excited to spend two weeks in paradise with the people I love, my husband and my parents!

Thursday Feb 23- Sunday Feb. 26:

We flew stand by to save some money. (Ladd's amazing uncle works or the airlines) The downfall is that you don't know if you I'll get on. Which is exactly what happened for the first flight. We waited or the next one, we were the last names to get called but only one could go. So, sent my mom. So, it was back to the house to wait until morning for the rest of us. We were able to get a flight to Long Beach, since LAX was booked for days. If you ever fly stand by don't try flying to lax, not fun. My dads sister came and picked us up to meet our mom as LAX. We spent the day going to Venice beach, eating some awesome Mexican food, and walking to a local mall to eat some frozen yogurt! That night we caught our flight to Sydney, we went to Sydney because delta
doesn't fly to New Zealand. We spent the day in Sydney hanging around the bay and going on a great boat ride!
Waiting for our flight to LAX, round 2
Finally getting to Sydney after several days. We started our journey on Feb. 23 got to Sydney on Feb. 26. It sounds worse then it was, we skipped the 25 all together because of the international date line.

Our hotel in Sydney! You better believe I got the top bunk!!


Me and my beautiful mother on our boat ride through Sydney Harbor!
View of Sydney from our boat!

Next off to New Zealand!!!!
Monday Feb. 27:
We got up early and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Auckland! When we got there we were picked up by my fathers old missionary companion Steven Pokere! (FYI, no big deal but he played for the ALL BLACKS). We hung out with him and his wife for the rest of the day. His wife made the best food ever, Bacon and Egg pie. I will be making this soon!!
First thing we saw getting off the plane in Auckland!

Tuesday, Feb. 28:
Time to get ready to head into Auckland!!! We spent most of the day in Auckland. We went to the Sky tower, the national museum, and of course shopping!
Sky Tower we went to the very top!!
The view from the top, Auckland City.
Don't worry the floors were glass in parts. That is me standing on the glass looking down! It took alot of courage to walk on the glass!

Wednesday Feb. 29:
Next on our way to Lake Taupo where the race was being held! We stopped a couple places before we finally got there!
Our bike all loaded up ready to go! If you can't spot mine it is the really cute one with the pink seat and wheels!!!
First stop ice cream, in Pokeno!!! We were on a mission to find the biggest scoops, this place ended up getting second. Oh yes that is a double scoop before and Ironman!!! The ice cream in AMAZING I am going through withdrawals right now.

Next stop the LDS temple in Hamilton. What a beautiful place!!!

That night we checked into our hotel, which was actually a hostel. Word of advice, never stay in a hostel when you are trying to get a good night of sleep!

Thursday March 1:
We got up early to go for a swim and get our wet suits dipped(cleaned) and check in. The wind was starting to get worse as they time went on. By the time we were able to get in the water there were white caps. Since my shoulder injury I wasn't to excited about trying to swim with that! So we decided to go to Rotorua, a near by town.
Agrodome! One of the best places in New Zealand. Here they have every kind of sheep imaginable, which is awesome. Who doesn't love sheep!!!

SHEEP, SHEEP AND MORE SHEEP!!!
Waiting for the sheep show! Look how excited we are!!
Here is the finale of the sheep show. Yes, those dogs are running on the top of those sheep. And by the way those sheep are real life sheep!!! Now do you understand why I love this so much!
Next on the agenda is going on a gondola ride followed by a luge down the mountain.
There my mom goes! She went down the advanced one on her first try, and did well. Then my dad took off on the easy on. He saw a bunch of signs that said slow down, but didn't and ended up in the bush! Maybe he forgot we had an Ironman coming up! I went slow because I was wearing my new $200 Ironman Jacket (by the way I have never bought anything that much, this was a once in a life time thing!!!)

That night we went back to Taupo for the Pre dinner! I was amazing food and fun to see all the athletes. There were about 550 first time athletes, and there were 48 countries represented. The only problem was, the news that they gave us at the end of the race. They informed us that there was a tropical storm of the way, and it was coming on the day of the race. Let the prayers begin!!!! Another meeting was set for Friday to give us an update!

END OF PART 1

KESTREL BIKES....I would RECOMMEND them to anyone!

Now that I have riden this new beauty, I can give an accurate report! This Kestrel bike is everything I had hoped it would be. It is a perfect fit and felt great out on the road! It is smooth and fast! I wanted to give a special thanks to Kestrel bikes for sponsoring our team....I will be recommending their bikes! Also thanks to T3 Sports for putting it together and to Heath Thurston for a PERFECT bike fit! I cannot wait to race this bike this summer!

Tifie Ranch Snowshoe Retreat

This weekend was our first retreat with our newly formed womens team. I can't tell you how stoked I was to hang out with some positive, amazing women and burn some serious calories! I wasn't disappointed on either account.

Tifie Ranch sits on 600+ acres near Morgan, Utah and is the home of Robert Workman, founder of GoalZero (among his other projects). He and his wife were kind enough to let us stay in one of the cottages on their property and tromp down their snow. So we loaded up the snacks, threw on our cozy Bear Paw boots (of course!) and headed for the mountains.

After a night full of laughs, we headed to bed excited to go exploring on Saturday. We woke up to perfect conditions- overcast but not too cold. The climb began right from the trail-head and after a quick stop at the yurts, we continued our ascent of 1744 ft. in just under 2 miles to the ridge overlooking the ranch. That kind of climbing is tough enough as it is, but breaking trail through fresh snow brought the HR up even more. It was wicked hard but even with my hip-flexors screaming at me, I kept thinking how much fun the descent would be!

Beautiful powder softened each step as we quickly ate up the rest of the 6 miles on the way back. It was SO hard, but man, that felt good! We had a bit of a walk on the road to get back to the ranch, and all I could think was how badly I wanted to get my tired feet back into my Bear Paws... seriously. Sherri was kind enough to bring tasty protein shakes for us to try and I've never been so blissfully happy to sit until it was my turn for a searing hot shower.

Ladies, I had a ton of fun and laughs and can't wait until next year. I'm pretty confident I'll be ready to take on that ridge all the way around the rim. Thanks to the Workman's for their generosity and to the team for a trash-kicking good time!

My new best friend!

Last year I made the decision that I needed to upgrade from a road bike to a triathlon bike. I spent the year saving my money for the purchase...I could often be heard before holidays and my birthday telling people to "donate to the bike fund." It was really hard to save for something for so long when I would go to races and see tri bikes that I really wanted and know that if I had a tri bike I would be a little faster!

I was so excited to hear that Kestrel was going to sponsor our team because their bikes were absolutely beautiful! I knew that I was going to be happy on one of their bikes. It has been a very long 4 weeks as I have ordered and waited for my bike to come in. I seriously felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning!! I even went down to T3 to see the beauty in the box before it was built.

This past Friday I was able to pick up my new ride. I was so impressed with how well built these bikes are. My husband could be heard saying, "even the skewer is top of the line quality...and the barrings are ceramic." The detail on this bike is awesome!

Heath Thurston will be fitting my bike tomorrow so that it is a perfect ride for me. I am now hoping that Mother Nature cooperates so I can get outside this next week.

Hang in There, McKenzie!

Sad news today out of New Zealand. McKenzie's Ironman has been canceled due to severe weather. After a crash on her bike in training, this tough girl still packed her bags with her shoulder in a sling and headed out to NZ to race. We're so proud of you, McKenzie and share your disappointment :( Hopefully, we can cheer for you at St. George Ironman this summer! Chin up!