Tarawera Ultra Marathon - let's face it, every New Zealand (and most Australian!) trail runner knows about this race. It's iconic, not least due to the amazing short film Chasing Pounamu. In the middle of February every year it feels like every single runner around the country (and many from abroad) flocks to Rotorua almost as an instinctive sort of seasonal migration. (It is, not coincidentally, also the worst weekend of the year for FOMO!)
My Tarawera history is a mixed bag; I DNFed my first attempt at the 100 mile distance in 2021. I was entered for the 102km in 2022 and was going to withdraw over lack of fitness when the race was cancelled. I ran my deferred entry in 2023, coming in 17:41 for my first 100k race (having run the distance on a flat course in training) on the alternative 'loops' course (significantly easier than the normal route). I jumped back to the 100 mile course in 2024 and came in just over 32 and a half hours. For 2025, I chose to come back down to the 102k and see if I could start improving my result. I'd had a long held ambition to get my 100k time under 15 hours.
In December after a disappointing Kepler Challenge result I parted ways with my long term running coach and elected to start training myself, predominantly with an eye on improving my Kepler result - my times have been on the decline over the years when they shouldn't be, and it's a race where I know I've never run my best (while it also happens to be my favourite). My best two times on the course were achieved when I was training myself - before I was even trained as a running coach! - and I know what I need to do for it. When we parted ways, though, I had more or less written my TUM goals off as impossible for 2025. I hadn't run enough earlier in the season, and I knew that my aerobic base wasn't where I would have liked it to be.
At the time, I sat down to make a conscious choice about my strategy for the summer. I had two options: continue on the training trajectory I was on, and look for a sub-20 hour result, or a PR if everything came together perfectly on race day. The other option was putting a race start at risk and rolling the dice by massively increasing my mileage to where I knew it should have been. I decided I wouldn't be heartbroken if the approach didn't work, I'd have plenty of time to recover by Kepler if it didn't work, and the dice got rolled. Over three weeks I increased my mileage from 40-50k weeks to over 100k. I truly do not recommend doing this at home.
To cope with the sudden strain on my body I did all the right things: I increased my calorie intake, I focused on recovery - Normatec, cold plunges, massages, I paid attention to my readiness scores on Oura (the rule: under 70, no training), I brought in some running form drills. And my fitness responded beautifully.
Coming into the race, I knew I was in good nick. A few weeks out I ran a training Luxmore Grunt, where to the hut and back I ran a 3:34. For the uninitiated, this is on the Kepler Track, a 27km out and back with just under 1000m of climbing. My time in the Grunt on race day is 3:27, and I'd not been under 4 hours for the run in 7 years. This started to give me a little glimmer of hope that Tarawera might exceed my expectations.
We road tripped up to the race which gave me a great distraction from my ever-increasing nerves. I don't often get nervous for races any more, particularly when they're a distance or race I've done previously - but the knowledge that I had the fitness back to do quite well was playing on my anxiety. My friend Jason observed that it's something to do with knowing you can do well - if you're in terrible shape there's nothing to be nervous about, it'll be what it'll be. But knowing you've got yourself to the start line in as good a position as possible brings out the anxiety. I kept reminding myself that anxiety and excitement are identical sensations in the body, in some kind of attempt to gaslight myself into thinking I wasn't nervous at all.
Race day dawned with perfect conditions - overcast, after some overnight rain. I woke up with a truly inspirational thought in my head - "I don't like this. Why am I doing it?" - but got the morning routine going anyway. (The morning routine in question? Protein shake and bagel, do my hair in power braids, and lube up everywhere.)
The 102 at Tarawera (usually) starts out at Kawerau, an hour or so away on bus. By the time we got there it was only half an hour to race start - time for a nervous visit to the toilet, some stretches, and getting in my Duolingo Spanish lesson so I didn't lose my streak. Before I knew it, the amazing Paul Charteris was telling us how proud he was, we had the traditional haka to send us out, and we were on our way.
The miler started out at Kawerau last year so I had a good idea of what was in store for the first part - across fields, single track with no places to pass, followed by some wide open forestry roads. I started positively so as to not get stuck in the single track, placed myself really well, and settled in. By the time we hit the forestry roads I was happily keeping up 6:30-7 min/km and feeling good.
Not long after this Quentin of the Trail Snails caught up to me and I just about exploded with excitement. I'd stopped listening to the Snails podcast for a few weeks as I wanted to save the episodes for night time at the race (a side note: I do music during the day and podcasts during the night as it somehow makes me feel like I'm just hanging out with mates, not by myself in the middle of nowhere in pitch black) - so I had absolutely no idea there was another Snail out there on the trails with me. I've also never met one during a race before. It absolutely made my day, and we shared a few km together before I let him head on without me as he was keeping a quicker pace than I wanted to.
It was when we hit some gradual uphills that I realised just how good I was feeling. While everyone else around me was walking I mostly ran them. I'm a stronger uphill runner than I am hiker, and my heart rate recovers very quickly - but I often get caught up in imposter syndrome when people around me start walking and I think "jeez, they look like a better runner than me and they're walking, what makes me think I can run this?". But this year was different - this year I firmly told myself I was absolutely fine and could run these hills with no problem whatsoever. They were all shorter and flatter than anything I run in training, and I knew I'd catch my breath on the flats and downs.
I was surprised by how quickly we came to Outlet aid station, and realised we were running the technical track in reverse to last year. (I did not study the map much, clearly.) Technical track isn't my greatest strength so I slowed down quite a lot and focused on not falling like I did last year. I let quite a few people pass me but figured I'd see them again on the forestry roads, and before I knew it we were out of the bush and back in the open. The field was still surprisingly bunched up here - in the bush it had felt like I was miles from the nearest person, but once we got out of it there were probably fifty of us within sight!
I enjoyed the forestry roads, falling in with a girl named Catharine from Florida who was having her first crack at the 100k distance on her way to some big ambitious goals at other races. Like Quentin, I ended up letting her head on ahead of me while I kept my same consistent pace. One thing I've learned in ultras is that you can really mess up by going a bit too hard in the first half, and I had a strategy to keep things pretty quiet until Okataina at 58km.
Fenton Mill saw us get our first drop bags. I'm usually pretty efficient at aid stations and this worked well - popped my Invisalign out, downed a Diet Coke, replaced my Tailwind, replenished my gel supply, reapplied sunscreen, brushed my teeth, Invisalign back in and on I trotted. I was still feeling incredibly strong for having run more than a marathon (and climbed over 1000m!), and that was when the mathematics started kicking in.
I'd given my crew split times for between 16:30 and 20 hours, but I knew I was well ahead of all of them. In a fit of optimism the previous week I'd used UltraPacer to work out splits for a 15 hour finish - which meant I'd need to be at Okataina around 7:51. It had seemed ridiculous at the time but as I left Fenton Mill I realised it was only going to take 9:30/km to get me there from where I was. I knew there was some climbing to come, but figured it was worth a crack. (Well, what I actually said to myself was "You think Don trains some little b***h who can't run from here to Okataina? Let's go!")
The next section on forestry roads again was hot and exposed but relatively easy running - nothing too gnarly until we passed Rotoiti aid station and went into a technical 5k on newly built trail, which was very slippery and muddy in parts (and tested the definition of "a trail"). But I had a bit of time up my sleeve and came into Okataina at 7:43.
Here I picked up my compulsory gear and, thankfully, my running poles. I'd made the strategic call to leave it all at Okataina and very nearly didn't pick my poles up at all as I was moving so well. The climb out of Okataina is extremely well known - it's something that wouldn't bother you too much in training but late in an ultra feels tough - and in the end I took the poles and was very glad for it.
In the miler (and 102) last year we had an out and back on Western Okataina that absolutely took souls. It took me four and a half hours to navigate the 15km trail on the way back, and in my race plans I'd allowed for 3-3:30 just remembering how tough it had been. But I was still feeling fairly fresh, and came off the trail at 10 hours, 10 minutes. 29km to go - I knew that a 15 hour finish was suddenly in my crosshairs.
One of the best things I did at the aid station at the end of Western Okataina was to sit down, have a ginger ale and a coke, and take the time to put my poles away. Something about a two minute sit down just refreshed me. I'm used to coming out of that aid station walking the downhill and feeling broken, but a few steps in it suddenly occurred to me that even though there were more than 70km on my legs, they felt absolutely fine. "Then run", I said to myself, and pushed up to a low 6min/km pace.
Something I've failed on in every ultra I've ever run is remembering that I'm racing, not just out for a Sunday jog. It was what I mentioned over and over as my biggest goal for this race - I wanted to RACE it, not just run it. And as I pushed my pace after Miller Road, I realised that was exactly what I was doing. I was more than ten hours in and still doing the hard thing in a hard way. I started to pick up places. I actually passed over 30 people in the next section.
The course was all familiar to me now - the section around Blue Lake home is something I've run every year I've run TUM, and it's my favourite of the whole thing. I came into Blue Lake to the wonderful Kirsty yelling "yeah the Snails!" as she saw my orange cap - and then up to my awesome support crew of Jess, Sally and Jason, who had miraculously arrived in spite of my being ludicrously far off my predicted splits. The first thing I said to them was "don't let me fuck around here!", followed by asking after Tara who'd run her first ultra earlier in the day. They assured me that she was smashing it and that I was in the top 10 of my category. With that news, I was off!
One of my main goals coming into the race had been to "at least get to" Okataina before darkness. When I got there mid afternoon my goal became to get to Tikitapu before dark fell. I'd never imagined in my wildest dreams I'd be well out of there before darkness - I was actually halfway to Redwoods aid station before I even took my headlamp out of my pack, and then only because I was getting my poles out. I ended up only needing to switch it on less than a kilometre before the final aid station.
Coming into the final aid station at 95km I had everything down to military precision. Ginger ale, coke, water, no need for more gels or Tailwind. I tossed my poles at my poor crew who had made it there by the skin of their teeth (literally - Jess had lost a shoe sprinting into the station to meet me, and Jason hadn't even got to it and was just hanging out in the woods!), and set out for the final stretch at what would be a normal training pace for me. I was still busy mathsing and knew that if I pulled off a 5 minute PR for the final 7km, I could come in under 14:30, a time that absolutely blew my mind.
But the thing was, I was still running just fine. I've never experienced this in even a 50km race - ever since I've started running ultras, I've never run well in the back half. I assumed it wasn't a thing anyone but elite runners could do (or Kylie at the end of Tekapo 50). But my legs felt fine. My feet hurt, but not horrifically, not to the extent that they did in the miler where even walking was excruciating. There was nothing going on that I couldn't ignore for another 7km. I settled into a rhythm and I just happily ran home, passing a few people both in my race and the 50km along the way.
I've got a bit of numbers OCD so there was a lot of maths in the final stretch as I realised I'd be comfortably under 14:30 - the game then became trying to go under 14:15. I didn't walk a step of that final 7km, a final 7km I have barely even run a step of in my past efforts. Before I really knew it (and before I'd lost my mind battling all the bugs attracted to my headlamp), the finishing chute was in sight and I ran in to the cheers of my friends and calling home of my old coach Ali (who would be off the microphone at the 17 hour mark, so who I never imagined would be calling me in) - 14:13 and change, two minutes short of a full three and a half hour PR. 233rd of 661 (729 starters) overall; 47th female of 220 (256 starters); 6th of 32 in my age group.
I couldn't believe it; I can't really believe it now. I am someone who has spent the vast majority of their life being told they're not good at running - that they don't look like a runner, that they're too overweight to be a runner, that they're not fast - and ultimately internalising that message, as we do. It's impacted how I've chased my goals in my past, and it's always impacted how much I back myself. But I've never felt as strong as I felt the whole day through this race. Everything went right - but for the most part, it was because I'd prepared for things to go right. As I sat down with lil Loki at my side, munching on the Wendys that my friends had (in a great hurry!) got me for my finish, and was told how fresh I looked, and that I seemed like I could have kept running for hours more - I realised I'd absolutely smashed my own expectations more than I ever had in my life before.
I'm proud of how I backed myself on this race; I'm proud of the fact I took up the challenge of training myself, immediately addressed my weaknesses, and finally ran a race that I felt like was to my potential. I'm even more proud of Tara who ran her first ultra on the same day, bringing home 53km in 7:24, an amazing time for her first go at the distance. I'm also super grateful to my friends who supported me - not just my aid station / finish line crew but my long distance cheerleaders too, sending messages through the day. Special shoutout to those I was meant to have a Zoom beer with at the end... but who were asleep because I was so wrong about my finishing time. (And shoutout to Áine in Ireland for taking one for the team and having a morning [hungover] G&T with me on Facetime!)
As always, I'm also especially grateful to my coaches - James from NTS Nutrition (for food) and Don Saladino (for everything else!) - though I guess I now have to add LFS to that list! This race is definitely the start of some even bigger goals. Watch this space... and come chat to me if you've got some big goals yourself!
