Challenges, disappointments, strategy & fun. What a ride, 2024

Looking forward to taking my learnings into 2025.

“Taking on the challenge of the Pro Series is something that excites me, and a large reason I do this sport is the simple goal of seeing how much I can achieve against the best in the world. When thinking about this opportunity it feels a little surreal that a little over 10 years ago I had my first ever pool session with a triathlon club (in the slowest lane), and just over 6 years ago I lined up in my first IRONMAN 70.3. In all these moments I just wanted to get a little better and test myself. In many ways this hasn’t changed, it’s just that now the stages are a bit bigger!”

Writing this back in January this year, to be honest I was still a little hesitant in pushing go for the Pro Series. I had to sacrifice my position on the start-line at the ANZCO Foods IMNZ, our local IRONMAN event, and it was going to be far and away my biggest year in Triathlon with 3 x full IRONMANs.

Sitting here almost a year on, I had no idea what was really ahead of me as I joined the pack in chasing the Pro Series.

Along the way there were challenges & disappointments mixed in with a bunch of strategy & fun. Here’s my recap on a wild 2024 :)

My year started off with 2 x half distance events that were not part of the Pro Series; the Tauranga Half and Geelong 70.3 (which is actually part of the Pro series in 2025). These were not priority races, and instead I was all eyes on my first full distance of the year and Pro Series; IRONMAN Texas, the North American Champs.

In Texas, I had a pretty good day. A 55min swim, 4h41 bike, and 3h09 run to finish in 4th place. I wasn’t happy with my swim and could’ve paced the run better. But I had good energy for most of the day and gained a lot of confidence from being amongst the front of the race. Overall we felt it was a promising way to start the year.

Next was Cairns IRONMAN, the Asia Pacific champs, 7 weeks after Texas.

When we planned out the year in January last year, I decided that Cairns was one of the races I really wanted to target and so that’s how my training build was structured; we aimed to build further from my performance in Texas to hit Cairns in slightly better form. And this is what we managed to achieve. A 53min swim, 4h42 bike and 3h04 run to take the win. The build wasn’t without some challenges though, and I had been managing hamstring tendonopathy since before Texas.

A bit of recovery was required after Cairns (2 x full distances close together) and I had a little extra time off running for the hamstring, and then we began the build for the next part of the year; the build to IRONMAN World Champs in Nice. This went pretty well overall, with just some managing of the hamstring required. I attempted to race my first 70.3 for the series at Zell am See 70.3, but had a terrible day (possibly due to a mix of things but mostly due to fatigue within the IRONMAN build I was in), and so that was a DNF.

Disappointing, but there’s no time to dwell in an IRONMAN Pro series year – we were back to training for Nice shortly after.

Then it was the big one; IRONMAN Nice, the World Championships. A spectacular course. I had my best swim in an IRONMAN to date, coming out with the front pack. The plan was to take the first part of the climb steady, and build into the ride a little to avoid going out too hard on the hilly course.

However I punctured towards the top of the course and lost quite a few minutes while stopping twice to try and fix it (successfully on the second stop). Lost some mojo after that but stuck at it with the motivation to limit the loss of points for the Pro Series. My times were a 49min swim, 5h28 bike and 3hr09min run to finish 10th in the world. I was actually very stoked with that given the challenges to overcome on the day.

A world championships really takes its toll on the body and mind, especially when it’s a challenge course like Nice. So a week or two recovery felt needed after Nice and was taken. Then, we started the final build of 2024, for the last two races of the Pro series; the 70.3s. IRONMAN 70.3 Western Australia, the Asia Pacific 70.3 champs and IRONMAN 70.3 World Champs at home in NZ. Over the break after Nice I managed to finally get on top of the hamstring injury and all pain went, so we could finally introduce some real speed into the running again. Just in time for the 70.3s!

Western Australia 70.3 went just okay, an average swim, a good but solo bike and just okay run. Got some good points for the series and so ticked the main goal of the race. 27min swim, 2h13min bike and 1h25 run for 7th place in a close race.

70.3 world champs was two weeks later, and I had a better race here than in Australia which is what we tried to work towards. 25min swim, 2h18min bike and 1h24min run for 14th place in the world.

Overall, my 5 results in the series placed me 4th overall. If you had said to me at the start of the year that I would finish 4th , I probably wouldn’t have believed you!

I learnt so much from taking on the Pro series which I hope to take with me into 2025. We really enjoyed the year, met a bunch of great new people along the way and got to see new places around the world. Of course, there was a lot of hard work that went into it, many challenging days, some frustrating days, more doubt than I’d like to admit and sacrifices made along the way, but overall I’m proud of what our team managed to achieve in 2024. And I couldn’t do it without my team. Special mention here to my sponsors of

2024: MitoQ (Discount Code HW15), ANZCOFoods, Calley Homes, ASICS NZ, 2xu, and TriKai (Discount Code: HANNAH10).

I’m proud to work with great companies and represent them all.

Thanks to you all for following and reading along on here, it’s not the usual way pros like to share a part of their journey, but I quite enjoy getting to write down some more extended thoughts on training and life along the way of trying to be the best professional triathlete and person I can be.

The road to 2025 has begun, and I will once again be sharing insights on here along the way, So, till next time …