Lifestyle triathlete moves to front of pack

By PETER THORLEY WHANGAREI'S Katherine Anton is emerging from behind the shadows of the area's better known triathletes to stake a claim in the national triathlon championships.
After one win and two seconds in the Contact Energy National Triathlon Series, Anton is the overall leader in the series.
Some of the country's top competitors have yet to take part in the three races of the seven race series to date - but Anton is surfacing as the best of the rest - a position she is more than happy with.
"It is an uphill battle against the elite athletes because they're professionals and they have that edge that a fulltime athlete should with the best coaching available, I mean I'm getting good coaching here too but there's a few things they don't need to worry about that we do," she said. "But it's just good to be able to be at the level where we can actually race with them, I'm just starting to dabble in elite racing now and it's good fun."
The overall winner of the series of seven races will be the athlete with the best points out of their best four race results.
"There's been three so far and I'm leading the competition at the moment, mainly because I've done all three of them but I'm pretty sure that some other people will catch me up eventually," she said.
Another Whangarei triathlete Nicky Samuels is in the running for the title.
"Nicky's already won a couple of the races, she's an outstanding athlete and it's good to be able to race athletes like her. I guess that's one of the good things about the national series, it melds out really top class runners against the weekend kind of athletes," said Anton. And that's how Anton sees herself. The 32-year-old is a lawyer in Whangarei.
"It's a pretty full-on job and it's pretty hard to fit it all in _ I guess at the moment in season, when I'm racing and training quite hard I don't really do much other than work and train," she said.
She tries to mix her trips to triathlons around the country with some time off.
"My partner Steffan and I usually take a couple of days of holiday after attending a race so we can get a bit of R and R there."
Anton trains 20-25 hours a week, in season, and that volume of training means that there's quite a lot of injury prevention work to be done as well.
"You have to look after yourself otherwise you'd be continually injured," she said.
She dabbled in triathlons in her early twenties but then went overseas and didn't get back into it until a couple of years ago. She's been a runner since she was a kid and readily admits her weakness is in the first leg of the triathlon - the swimming section.
"It's often a game of catch-up for me on the bike and then again in the run," she said.
Anton surprised herself by finishing second in the World Age Group Championships last year in Hamburg - where she set her best time ever in a triathlon of 2:17.
Despite her great results she isn't thinking of tossing in her job and throwing her hat into the elite ring just yet.
"I don't know when that time comes for them to make that choice but I'm not at that level yet so it's not really something I need to be thinking about," she said.
Right now triathlon for her is a lifestyle option. "I'm enjoying it, it provides a good balance for me and a healthy lifestyle."
The next round of the national series is on February 3, at Kinloch, which also doubles as the National Sprint Championships.