Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Determined athlete
Pushing the body to its full potential is as much a mental achievement as a physical one, believes Anna Gellatly.
The 28-year-old will be one of a dozen Blenheim contestants in the 2014 Wanaka Challenge next Saturday. It will be the second time she has lined up for the annual half iron man challenge and she hopes to carve into her time from last year.
A keen runner, it was her first venture into competitive swimming and cycling.
Leading up to last year’s event, though, she suffered a stress fracture in her foot and was forced to cancel all running leading up to the event.
She wasn’t ready to cancel her entry, though, so prepared herself as well as she could with swimming and cycling drills. She completed the 1.9 kilometre swim, 90km cycle and 21.1km run in just over six and a half hours.
‘‘It’s a mental game,’’ she says to explain how she managed to run 21km with so little practice. ‘‘I just kept thinking: ‘Keep the legs moving and don’t stop till the end’. ‘‘Mind over matter.’’ Central Otago’s legendary hot summer weather had not blessed last year’s Wanaka Challenge, either. ‘‘It was a cold, rough day but nerves took over so I didn’t feel the cold that much.’’
Anna is confident she will beat last year’s time on Saturday. The stress fracture on her foot has healed and last year she ran her first Marlborough Marathon, finishing in exactly four hours.
She was not with runners in last weekend’s King and Queen of the Wither Hills challenge, though. She was on holiday in Wanaka, where she took the chance to go over the iron man course again. She smiles. ‘‘It made me remember how many hills there are around Wanaka.’’ But she is used to the slopes. She regularly runs up and down the Wither Hills.
She also cycles around the Grove and the Hawkesbury loops and practises her swimming in the pool at the Marlborough Lines Stadium 2000. That is also where she works, as a personal trainer.
Some of her clients are preparing for events such as the Wanaka Challenge. Others just want to improve their general fitness.
‘‘Start small with everything you do,’’ is Anna’s advice.
‘‘And add a little bit on each week.
‘‘Your body can do it, it’s your mind that wants to stop,’’ she says.
When her legs are aching, her breathing gets heavy and her mind starts shouting ‘‘Stop!’’, she forces herself to think of something else. ‘‘I think of the end of the race. ‘‘I don’t want to finish the race with any regrets like, ‘I wish I had pushed a little harder’, or ‘I wish I hadn’t stopped at that hill’.’’