Mount Maunganui & Jonah's TRYathlon

We are very lucky to have Erin's Dad 'Grandpapa' come and visit us over the Christmas holidays.  Our first trip with him was a weekend in Tauranga (Tow Run Ga) and Mount Maunganui (Mon gah new eee).

It's an interesting east coast port city with amazing beaches.  Weet-Bix is a popular cereal here in NZ that features athletes on the box. They sponsor the Weet-Bix TRYathlon series in NZ to encourage kids to try out the sport and be active.  The event Jonah participated in had over 1100 competitors from age 7-15, and they have over 15,000 participants each year! They do not time the event and just continuously start groups of 8 kids in the pool every minute to get everyone through.  It would be great to see something like this back in Canada.

We had to there early to get his bike and run gear set up in the transition zone, then we had a couple of hours to hang out before he started.  Lucky for us there was lots to do when you were not competing, including the velcro suit trampoline!

Jonah's age group had a 200m swim, 8km bike and 1.5km run.

On the drive to Tauranga we hiked Karangahake Gorge.

We also checked out the beautiful beach and hiked up Mount Maunganui while we watched a Surf Rescue Race (25km of running, swimming, surf ski kayaking, and paddleboarding). 

Saturday afternoon was at Waimarino Adventure Park.  Highlight was 'the Blob'.  Jonah got launched pretty high by Mom, then Mom got launched pretty high by Dad.  The weather was amazing (+25oC), making it hard to believe Christmas is less than a week away.