Competing in the Coast to Coast in February will serve as a honeymoon for Dunedin nurses Signe Stanbridge and Michael O'Brien.
The pair, who met while working in the emergency department of Canberra Hospital five years ago, will marry the week before competing in the two-person team section of the race.
For Stanbridge (32), the event will be just another challenge.
She has already competed in some of the world's great marathons, including New York and Boston, along with the 45km off-road Six Foot Track race across the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, and the demanding Motatapu Challenge.
''Signe's big thing is that she has always wanted to do the Coast to Coast,'' O'Brien (35) said.
''When we were overseas, she made a lot of my dreams become possible, by following me up the cliff faces, rock climbing.''
One such feat was a four-day vertical climb up the Nose route of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
''We climbed and slept and lived on the rock faces up to four or five days at a time,'' Stanbridge said.
The pair occasionally took longer than expected to complete a climb and would spend a night out in the cold.
''But mostly everything went pretty smoothly. We spent literally a couple of years doing this. So we got quite good at it,'' O'Brien said.
They climbed throughout Canada, Alaska, the United States and Mexico, and also made some long sea kayaking journeys.
One adventure was a two-week trip negotiating glaciers and icebergs in Alaska, and another was encountering whales and bears around the Haidi Gwaii Islands, off the west coast of Canada.
The pair returned to New Zealand in January this year, after completing adventures throughout north and south America.
Settling into a more mundane life in Dunedin was made easier with Stanbridge's purchase of a house near St Clair Beach 10 years ago, while at nursing school.
Their ability to put some serious training together was curtailed over the winter months when Stanbridge's father, Gerald, succumbed to an aggressive form of cancer.
O'Brien's birthday gift of a Coast to Coast entry renewed Stanbridge's enthusiasm for running. Her love of distance running will complement his cycling and kayaking skills in the Coast to Coast.
A life-threatening fall while climbing in France in 2005 curtailed O'Brien's ability to run.
The fall left him with his back broken in two places, a broken ankle and a broken elbow.
After a couple of weeks battling the injuries and the language barrier, he was transferred to Britain, where he spent the next four weeks before being shipped back to the family home in the Akatarawa Valley, near Wellington.
During his recuperation period, and coming to terms with arthritic pain from the extent of his injuries, O'Brien spent many hours contemplating what he wanted to do with his life.
He decided on a career change, from outdoor pursuits instruction to nursing.
Study and training in Wellington led to him meeting his future wife three years later in Canberra, and he also reignited his passion for rock climbing and kayaking.
It is shaping up as a special week. The couple are to marry on February 8 and embark on the Coast to Coast on February 14, Valentine's Day.
''He couldn't have planned it better,'' Stanbridge said.
Support for the two will come from O'Brien's parents Allison and Peter O'Brien, both avid cyclists, now based in Wanaka, and brother Gareth, who has completed the New York Marathon in 2hr 58min.
