Auckland Therapeutic Massage at Ironman Cairns

Now , Auckland Therapeutic Massage have been sponsoring Shayne for some time, but this has been the first international outing ! Ironman Cairns, in beautiful tropical Queensland is definitively a destination Ironman, scenic beaches, pretty coastal roads and of course the world famous Barrier Reef!

Except did I mention the crocodiles, spiders, sharks and jelly fish as well??? Now, no sports massage in the world could be asked to deal to that!!!

The swim start in Palm Cove, was looking absolutely gorgeous a few days out. Palm clad esplanade, boutique restaurants and resorts and the water reasonably calm. The road up to Port Douglas was looking reasonably conquerable, even with the prevalent winds off the water. And Cairns town itself actually shaped up to be a fabulous host city, boardwalk and all and a flat run of 3 laps around town. AND THEN IT STARTED TO RAIN.

And it pretty much didn’t stop for the next 6 days. In all fairness, the temperatures for the event ‘dropped’ from 28 to 22 Celsius, which must be a relief for most. However for the humble spectator and massage therapist (i.e. me), I felt like I better grow gills and webbed feet. At least from a massage point of view it meant less cramp to deal with in the athletes , even less blisters and apart from the usual exhaustion and muscle fatigue, our team did incredibly well – Shayne took an amazing 80 mins of his Taupo PB , finishing in 10 hours 48 (including wardrobe malfunction, but that is the title of another blog!)