John Mezger might be an amateur but he is addicted to multisport, and later this month he heads to Hawaii for an off-road world championship.
On October 26, 550 international triathletes will line up on the beach of Makena, Hawaii, for an off-road race that will test the mettle of the toughest swimmers, bikers and runners.
Wanaka weekend warrior John Mezger (31) will be among the starters and hoping to better last year's performance in the Xterra off-road triathlon world championships, when he finished 90th overall. At least 22 New Zealanders have qualified for the race, with Mezger among the handful of South Islanders.
Mezger's off-road triathlon results have been steadily improving this year as he has dedicated himself to a full training programme and international competition, while working full-time selling advertisements for a community newspaper, The Wanaka Sun.
But despite achieving results and times that puts him within cooee of professionals, he is happy to be a committed amateur athlete and enjoy multisport for what it is - a chance to gain experiences, train and compete with friends and his partner, Amber, and travel.
It all started with mountain biking, a sport the US native took up for fun in Wanaka's Sticky Forest when he arrived in town as a keen freestyle skier at the age of 14.
He is now seriously addicted to it.
Mezger has shuttled between Wanaka and other places a lot since immigrating to New Zealand. For six years, he led the skier's lifestyle of back-to-back winters between Wanaka and his home town of Boulder, Colorado.
He completed an economics degree at the University of Otago and lived in Wellington and Auckland before coming back to Wanaka about 18 months ago.
Mezger completed his first triathlon at Moke Lake, near Queenstown, when he was about 21 or 22 but did not come back to the sport until about four years ago.
"I grew up swimming. A friend, a Canadian triathlete, advised me to give Xterra a go when I was living in Wellington. I didn't train much for it. I think I prepared with two 500m swims. But that's changed."
Last season, Mezger started swimming in Lake Wanaka with open water exponent Mark Cockroft. The pair have even gone in gale-force winds although Mezger says that's not been his choice. Cockroft likes the chop best.
"Typically, I would prefer to windsurf in those conditions. But meeting up with Mark like that has made training worthwhile," Mezger said.
The world championship course in Hawaii is the same as last year and Mezger can replay that race in his mind as if it were yesterday.
"It starts with two 750m swim laps with a 100m beach run between each lap. That's really cruel, because there's waves coming back in and you have to go back in. But the water is just gorgeous - just the quality. It is so deep and so clear. You could easily get lost just looking at the fish," he said.
The Hawaii mountain bike course is completely different from the Rotorua off-road triathlon course, which Mezger enjoys more because of its forest and single-track terrain.
By contrast, the Hawaii bike course is on sharp volcanic rock, covered in barbed "puncture vines", with a 1500m climb. Once you have completed that, you are only half-way.
"They don't allow you to pre-ride the course, so last year I didn't know what to expect . . . and it was not what I expected. It's lava rock, all four-by-four tracks, covered in lava rocks and fine sandy ash, so that you can't get traction. The only place I've found similar in New Zealand is Arrowsmith Station, near Geraldine.
"A friend had five flats. Most people had some sort of technical issue. And when you crash, it shreds your skin," Mezger said.
He also had equipment problems and could only rely on three or four gears. But somehow he managed to avoid a flat tyre.
"So it was climb, climb, climb until you are shattered. Then it's downhill and over 20cm boulders. I looked up at one point and thought, 'Oh, It's really pretty.' But you don't really get a chance to do that," he said.
If the racing thus far in dry, hot, 33degC conditions sounds awful, there's no mercy on the run. After 1km on a four-wheel-drive track, the course starts climbing to about 500m.
Mezger likened it to running up to the 6km mark from the base of the Snow Farm skifield road in the Cardrona Valley.
"It's nasty, and after that, you descend through more four-by-four lava track littered with lava rocks . . . After that, you get to the flat section, where there's another 4km through an area a bit like Sticky Forest, ducking under trees and on single track. There's lots of cameras because by that time a lot of people are running into trees."
The worst was yet to come. The last 1500m was on soft beach sand, well above the firm mark where water meets land.
Mezger has struggled to find anywhere in Wanaka to replicate the conditions but has found the skifield access roads and his old haunt, Sticky Forest, useful.
After the world championships, Mezger plans to get on with the next thing on his list of things to do: training for the New Zealand open water 10km race in Wellington in April.
