Amy Kalan enjoys her training for Ironman New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
Amy Kalan enjoys her training for Ironman New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
Although it has been a long road with challenges along the way, Murray Drinnan and Amy Kalan have been training hard and enjoying the preparation journey for an Ironman race.
Every year two free entries to the next Ironman New Zealand event in Taupō are given away at the post-event volunteers' dinner.
Amy and Murray were last year's volunteer winners, and they are excited to put their many months of training into action as the Ironman draws closer.
This year's event was originally to have been held in March. However, because of Covid restrictions it was postponed to December. The 2023 event is still set to be held next March.
For Murray and Amy, the Ironman is something they have always had on their bucket list.
She says her recovery from Covid has been a rough road. She went from doing a six-hour bike and two-hour run to 20 minutes of exercise making her lungs burn.
However, she has slowly been building back up and is now feeling good in training again.
Amy says it has also been hard juggling all the time training takes with working and her family, which includes three sons.
"But for me I enjoy and get pleasure from the training. That helps a lot. It's definitely not for the faint-hearted."
Originally she would have said swimming was her favourite discipline as that was a sport she did growing up, but surprisingly it was probably now her least favourite of the three disciplines.
She says she has improved a lot in cycling and running.
Amy says it has been difficult having to train for so many more months than originally planned and it was hard to get her head around that initially.
"But now I just want to do it and am excited. I'm trying to do a few little events along the way to keep the excitement in the training."
She has lots of friends and family who will be there to cheer her along the way, she says.
Murray says taking part in Ironman was something he had always wanted to do.
Murray Drinnan has been working hard at training for the event. Photo / Supplied
He says there had been a number of reasons why the Ironman did not seem like a possibility at previous times, such as being busy raising a family.
He was blown away to be drawn as one of the free entries at the volunteers' dinner.
Murray started training in March last year, and will be tackling the 2023 Taupō Ironman because December is one of his busiest times of year as an agricultural contractor.
He says he has recently had Covid, so is taking it easy and will be gradually getting back into the training, which had been going well.
Of the three disciplines in Ironman he felt like he was best at the swimming, but has been enjoying getting better at each one.
Murray says he trains six days a week, with Sunday being his off day.
"I have a big day on Monday with a long ride or run and get up at 5am every day to do weights."
He says he is very much looking forward to putting all his hard work into the course in March.
"I'm putting two years into it so hopefully it's still on. You always expect it's going to be fun on the day but you never know what will happen, so you need to enjoy the ride there too.
"Hopefully there will be lots of international visitors in March."
Murray says all his kids wil come along with their families to support him on the day.
