Gina Crawford of Wanaka. Photo / Getty Images
The four-plus hours racing around Auckland today will be far too short for Gina Crawford's liking.
Crawford will carry the Kiwi hopes in the women's half ironman but knows the distance (1.9km swim, 90km cycle and 21.1km run) will prevent her from capitalising on the special skill that remained hidden well into her adult life.
While the 34-year-old won the Port of Tauranga half earlier this month, it's the full ironman in which she excels. It's why her goals remain winning Ironman New Zealand and earning a top-five finish at the world championships in Hawaii, and why today's race will serve as important preparation for those targets.
That won't necessarily preclude a positive result on the Auckland waterfront, but the race will finish too soon for Crawford to utilise her athletic advantage.
"I'll obviously be giving it my all," she said. "It's just that I have a switch that goes off after about five-and-a-half hours, and that's when I'll be off.
"That's when I do the marathon in the iron distance, and the switch never goes off during the half distance. I'd love to have that top-end speed, because I really enjoy this distance, but for me it's always a secondary focus."
Crawford's current focus would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Having competed in swimming at a national level during high school, she enjoyed a more sedentary lifestyle as a young adult before a desire to find fitness led to a shock discovery.
"I didn't know I had a talent for this kind of thing," she said. "I was doing nothing at all. I didn't do any exercise at all for eight years, once I left school, through university and into my working life. Then, at 25, I just decided to get fit and do a couple of those really small triathlons.
"I found I had a real passion for it, increased the distance then found I had a talent for iron distance. I mean, how would you know that? It's not like you go and do nine-hour races at school."
School was instead spent honing a craft rather disparate to her day job. Her proficiency at violin saw Crawford eventually work with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, a pursuit she plans on continuing once her 3-year-old son gets older.
Neither motherhood nor music has subtracted from Crawford's affection for ironman but it was threatened in 2009 when, after collapsing at a race in Germany, routine tests picked up a heart murmur. Further tests found a congenital heart defect that had been with her since birth, an unwelcome piece of news that initially rocked her confidence.
Crawford said at the time that she wished she had remained ignorant to the problem and, had she known about the defect in her earlier years, it could have ended her athletic career before it even began. But she refused to let the defect dissuade her from endurance events, slowly regaining trust in her own health and continuing to compete at the top of the sport.
"You've got a short life," she said, "and I'd rather be doing something I love and giving it everything than sitting around and waiting to see what happens. I really love the sport, I have a real passion for it, so I'm going to be doing it for as long as I can."