Racing Ironman in your 50s and dealing with pre-race setbacks - an athlete shares his insights on CurraNZ

HALLIDAY CROSS is an expat Brit living in Australia who underwent a massive fitness and health transformation in his 40s to go from a couch potato to a fiercely competitive amateur athlete in Ironman triathlons.

Having completed more than seven Ironmans in Australasia and Europe, Hal is chasing a sub ten-hour IronMan to qualify for the World Championships in Kona.

Also a triathlon coach, Hal has used CurraNZ for several years and considers it invaluable, particularly around accelerating recovery, which, as he points out, doesn’t get any easier in your 50s.

With the Asia-Pacific Champs his next 'A' race in June, Hal was using Challenge Melbourne as a key event for his Cairns Ironman build-up.

Unfortunately several training interruptions intervened before the half-Iron event in April. With an ongoing achilles niggle and tooth abscess, Hal was forced to miss some key training sessions but to his great surprise, it didn't prove a barrier to setting two fantastic PBs.

He says: "Having had a few interruptions to my 12-week Ironman Cairns training block, I felt that on Sunday I was pretty much back on track.

"I managed to PB at the half distance and come home in 4hrs 49 mins to place eighth in my age group. What was more pleasing was a huge 12 min bike PB and no achilles issues.

"It was pretty decent effort given the circumstances.

"A couple of years ago, I would have pushed through my training despite the pain, worrying that if I didn’t complete a session I would fail come race day. Not anymore.

"Nowadays my approach is always health first and I truly believe that one of the main reasons why I am able to return to action quickly and to perform so well is because of CurraNZ.  

"Taking two of these capsules per day has definitely helped me train, race and recover over and over again. My results have proven it.