Up close with Gina Crawford
Kiwi pro triathlete Gina Crawford is getting ready for the 2016 Challenge Wanaka, but she also has coaching and playing in the Christchurch Symphony on her mind, and on her schedule.
Slowtwitch: How are you doing and how is the family?
Gina Crawford: Happy New Year to you Herbert. I’m doing very well thanks. I had a great 3 weeks completely away from training in December and now I’m feeling so much better both physically and mentally and really enjoying my training again. My husband, Brett and son Benny are both doing very well too, enjoying the summer season, beach time and fishing of course!
ST: Late in 2015 you moved from Whanganui on the North Island to Rangiora, closer to Christchurch. Why the change?
Gina: Yes that’s right. We are both born and bred in Christchurch and lived there until the earthquakes in 2011. We were in quite a badly affected area and as we are both self-employed and had no reason that we had to stay we chose to spend the last few years travelling around a bit. We are both quite nomadic, hate to settle anywhere, always on the move, but in July of this year our son will be starting school and at that point we have to settle down, so we chose to come back home as it is the most likely place that we will stay put. We have roots here, and we would like Benny to be closer to his grandparents. My parents immigrated to NZ from South Africa so I never really had the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents, but we would like that for him, and he is the only grandchild on my side so even more important I think. Rangiora is about 25k from Christchurch, so close enough to be able to see much more of my parents, but offers great roads for cycling with no traffic and a great swimming pool, which Christchurch still is quite short on post earthquakes.
ST: How much damage is still left from that earthquake time, and is it obvious?
Gina: It is more the frustrations that everyone has had to have ongoing for such a long time. The city has now had nearly everything cleared and it is just a blank canvas waiting for all the projects to start, but red tape has been holding everything up. Then traffic is a real problem because most businesses have moved to the West of the city, which is also a residential area and the roads are very clogged up. Where I used to live in the East is quite peaceful but the roads are still annoyingly rutted and remain unfixed. Facilities have just taken a long time to get going. The quakes were 5 years ago now but people are still waiting to have things rebuilt. For example, I used to live around the corner from the big swimming pool and athletics track built for the 1978 Commonwealth games. It was an amazing facility. There have been arguments as to what to do on the site. Finally they have decided to build the big swimming complex in the city and I think it may be ready in around 2020, as for the local pool it will be built, but much smaller, and a high school will also be built which can utilize the pool. I think they plan to have this done by 2018.
ST: Wow. On a slightly different note, did your move go smoothly?
Gina: Yes, we have shifted so many times in the last 5 years we are pros at it now!!
ST: Looking back at 2015, what do you remember most fondly?
Gina: So many things. I am always so grateful for the new experiences that I have and new places I have been able to visit. Last year I guess the highlight was in February with me winning Challenge Wanaka for the 6th time, that was very special. We also got to travel to some great places that we love, Cairns and Germany, I revisited the island of Bintan which is always such a great destination for me to go to race and then I traveled to Taiwan to race for the first time in November. Lots of great memories in there!
ST: If you had to describe 2015 in a few words, what would you say?
Gina: 2015 was a great learning year. I had quite a few challenges that faced me but I battled my way through and learnt something with each one!
ST: 2016 is looking to be a substantial change for you in terms of racing.
Gina: Yes it is. We have done so much traveling the last few years with my racing, particularly to Europe. We absolutely love traveling to race in Europe and have had so many great experiences but 2016 I want to travel less, and spend more time racing in my own backyard and we have some fantastic races in Australia and New Zealand. I also cannot keep going being a full time athlete, I need something else to really challenge me and give my life more meaning. Before coming into this sport I was a teacher, and I absolutely loved teaching and helping others and I want to combine my two passions now and teach in the area that I am most passionate about, and that is sport. I have such an experience to draw back on now. 37 Iron distance finishes in 8 seasons of racing the Iron distance, 13 victories, 4 top 10 finishes at Kona, so much experience and learning and I want to pass this on to others. I have now started coaching and have a couple of amazing athletes that have most generously let me into their journey and I am loving that, I love being out on the bike and brainstorming how I can help them further, it is really exciting having other people’s goals to think about. I completed the Ironman Coaching course and I have also just started a course in Personal Training. Ironman is a pretty huge goal for most people to aim for, and I would love the opportunity in the future to help people to bring any type of fitness into their lives and enhance their health and wellbeing.
ST: But Challenge Wanaka is on the horizon in the not too distant future.
Gina: Yes it is! I will be back for I think my 8th time there, and I am pushing myself hard in my own training with the goal of taking my 7th title there. Wanaka is such a beautiful place but really I love the course as it is very tough, the bike in particular, and the run is all off road which gives you quite a slow time, but it is a course that truly Challenges you and you don’t have to worry about any packs of people interfering with your race! I also aim to do the Wanaka/Taupo double again. I did it last year, it was 13 days apart and this year we have one extra day to recover. At first I wasn’t sure if I would challenge myself to this again, but I have an athlete racing who is really working hard and I really want to see her finish, and then also just in the last few weeks my training has just started to go really well. I feel in a very good place both mentally and physically, and very enthusiastic, so I think I will give it another crack.
ST: As a coach, how many folks do you think you can handle? And will it be pros and age groupers?
Gina: It’s definitely not about numbers with me. I’m going to start out very slowly. I want to make sure I offer a great, quality service and give people all the time that they need. So I aim to coach a small, select group of people at first and then over time increase as my own sporting goals become less and less. I think coaching female pros would be a bit of a conflict of interest while I am still racing!! But in the future when I am no longer racing then sure I would love to be a part of a female pro’s journey. At the moment I am focused on the age group athlete. As a person who juggled work in the early part of my sports career and more lately juggles family I know how to put together a program that will get the most out of oneself on a limited amount of time. When I look back now at myself, I really believe that my results are not really due to my talent. I’m definitely not the most talented athlete out there, but I do beat more talented people all the time, and it is because I am very good at managing my training. I have very seldom had to deal with injury or sickness, which means I get consistent training which in Ironman is the key to success.
ST: Which coaches do you look most up to?
Gina: Gosh this will be a very long answer, sorry! I was actually thinking the other day, how very lucky I have been to have my life cross paths with some amazing men who have shaped the athlete I am, and the way that I coach. I think most important was my experience as a child with my swimming coaches rather than when I was an adult doing triathlon. From the age of around 7 or 8 I had the most amazing swimming coach Bruce Horner who really pushed me hard, but made my training very fun and enjoyable at the same time and gave me a lot of confidence at a very early age. He really pushed me to challenge myself. I remember when I was 10 I did a 3K IM time trial. So that was 750m of butterfly with no one arms as I had to have someone watch to make sure I did it properly. I still can’t believe I did that and at only 10. I don’t think I could do that now. We had a very small club only about 5 kids I think, but out of the 5 of us, I went on to become a pro Ironman athlete, and another girl Helen went on to become one of the best female swimmers NZ has ever had. Bruce died in a tragic mountain accident when I was 13 and I didn’t swim again in races for 2 years as I was too upset. I still have his photo and I think about him every single week, he was an incredibly special person to me. When I did get back into swimming at 15 I was also very lucky with my next coach Blair McMillan who I learnt an incredible work ethic off. Nothing I ever have done in triathlon compares to how hard we used to train as swimmers I don’t think. We had some great swimmers in our squad and some even went to the Olympics so I was surrounded with talent and I always believe success breeds success. When I went off to University I gave up swimming and didn’t do any exercise at all for about 8 years, but when I did I just happened upon Roly Crichton. I can credit Roly for really getting me into the sport, if I hadn’t of met him there would be no way I would ever be where I am today. I met him at the pool when I just started getting into some exercise again and he invited me to join his tri swimming squad and I thought why not? Anyway talking about success breeds success he had the most amazing group of people at his swim squads, he was incredibly enthusiastic and giving of his time and his sessions were always challenging but interesting, they reminded me of Bruce’s sessions. Amongst the group were Andrea Hewitt, Dylan McNiece, Scott Molina! I can’t tell you how amazing it was to just see Scott Molina swimming up and down in your lane as well as countless other talented people, and then from outside Christchurch people came from all over the world to Christchurch for summer because of Roly. Bella and Stephen Bayliss would come over, Bryan Rhodes, Hilary Biscay, Chris McDonald, Bjorn Andersson. It was incredible, and for me I would see these people were just normal people who just worked damn hard and I thought well I can do that. I’m definitely not the most talented person out there but I do have a great work ethic, and really it was just success breeds success. My first step into triathlon I had great help from John Hellemans and then when I took on Ironman Greg Fraine can be credited with all my early successes. I learnt so much from Greg and even though I have coached myself for about half the years I have been in the sport a lot of the way I coached myself was based on what I learnt from Greg. In 2014 I worked with Matt Dixon and I learnt a lot about building recovery into my schedule and then last year I worked with Kristian Manietta from TriSpecific who I really gelled with and a lot of our way of thinking in regards to triathlon training is the same. Apart from these people I have directly been able to work off I really look up to a number of other coaches. I think without a doubt Brett Sutton is the best coach in our sport and I like to read a lot of what he has to say, and then of course Siri Lindley is a very impressive coach with a very positive way of looking at life and in New Zealand we are so lucky to have Sam Warriner. I looked up to her immensely as an athlete and also as a coach too. She is doing amazing things especially with the kids so watch for NZ in triathlon in the future as I am sure Sam is going to take many of her young ones right to the top!
ST: More music in 2016?
Gina: Yes. I’ve been away from Christchurch for nearly 5 years but I have been so lucky that the orchestra here (the Christchurch Symphony) is letting me play again. I have 7 concerts lined up for 2016 and the first one will be in about one month’s time so I’m busy practicing for that.
ST: Have you been practicing?
Gina: Yes. Last year I joined up a local orchestra (not professional just for fun) in Whanganui and I enjoyed that, but now that I have a certain standard that I must achieve in order to play with the professional orchestra I am certainly putting in more effort.
ST: Anything else we should know?
Gina: I’d like to thank these sponsors for their support in 2016. Ceepo, Project Clothing, Asics NZ, Rudy Project. I’m also working on a new website which will be ready soon specific to coaching, but at the moment any information about the coaching I am offering is on ginacrawford.com
ST: Good luck with 2016.
Gina: Thanks Herbert!
