Last weekend, Queenstown volunteer fiery Aaron Murphy, 50, became just the third firefighter in the South Island, and the 72nd in New Zealand, to beat the clock in the United Fire Brigades Association of New Zealand’s (UFBANZ) South Island Firefighter Challenge, held in Christchurch.
The others to have earned their place in the Lion’s Den are fellow Queenstown fireys Claire Jones, who won the open women’s event last weekend in 2min 28.29sec, and Samuel Stafford-Bush, who came second in the open men’s event (1min 41sec).
Murphy, who has been with the Queenstown brigade for 10 years, says he has trained pretty much five days a week for the past 18 months to prepare, including weekly sessions at Industrial Fitness with Scorched PT’s Josh Abrams, and at least twice a week with other members of Queens-town’s combat team.
Described as being like a ‘firefighter Ironman’, competitors wear full bunker gear and breathing apparatus to race against each other and the clock in a series of five tasks, including climbing a six-storey tower carrying a 19kg hose; hoisting a hose coil six storeys; and dragging a life-sized dummy 30.5m.
‘‘I started the course and every second felt like 10.
‘‘My lungs were screaming, my legs were jelly, and I was like, ‘man, I don’t even know if I can finish this thing.’’
Finish he did, though, in a time of 2min 26.94sec, just below the 2min 30sec qualifying time in his over-50s category.
‘‘I couldn’t believe it . . .I was absolutely stoked.’’
Queenstowners, he says, owned the results last weekend — along with Jones and Stafford-Bush’s individual results, the pair combined to win the co-ed tandems in 1min 34.30sec, and, with Jesse Johnston, who also recorded a PB, Lee Winter and Julian Facci came second in the teams relay in 1min 28.65sec.
‘‘In the last years, Queenstown, from a brigade that wasn’t really even involved in the combat side, we’re just dominating the categories and winning all the awards in the past few years,’’ Murphy says.
‘‘It’s great, it puts the Queens-town brigade on the NZ map for this sort of thing.’’
The combat team is now focused on a solid performance at the UFBANZ nationals, being held in Wellington at the beginning of May.
