After a string of false starts, champion Kiwi triathlete Dr Hannah Berry will finally race in the Ironman world champs in Kona next weekend. She tells Suzanne McFadden about the stressful injury that put a stick in her spokes.
For 14 weeks, Dr Hannah Berry couldn’t run. Wasn’t allowed to.
As she’d “hobbled” to the finish of Ironman NZ in March, the second woman to cross the line, she noticed a nagging pain in her hip. But she brushed it off as one of those inevitable aches that go hand-in-hand with a 3.8km swim, followed by a 180km bike ride and a 42km run.
And she was relieved to secure her ticket to make her debut at the Ironman world championship in Kona, then six months away.
But a couple of days following the massive race in Taupō, Berry's sore hip was lingering, well after the rest of her body had stopped hurting.
An MRI scan revealed the pain was radiating from a stress reaction in her femur – a precursor to a broken thigh bone. “It’s like a bruise on the bone,” says Berry, nee Wells. “You have to unload it and let it heal otherwise it will eventually turn into a fracture.
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“It's basically overload - too much bone breakdown and not enough time allowing it to heal.”
The only cure was rest, so Dr Berry, who has a PhD in biotech engineering, reluctantly gave up running for three-and-a-half months.
Having raced in the professional triathlon ranks for the past seven years, Berry knew a complete break from running could seriously hinder her chances of finally making the pinnacle of Ironman events.
“At the time I was like ‘Am I going to make it to the world champs or not?’” she says. “There was a bit of the unknown there.”
Berry had snared a ticket to Kona before – after winning the Ironman NZ title in 2021. But Covid postponed the worlds twice, and then an injury later that year forced Berry to withdraw from the rescheduled world champs, moved to Utah in May 2022.
She didn’t want to surrender the chance yet again.
“We checked a few things to make sure there wasn’t something else contributing to the injury. Everything appeared good - my bone density scan showed it was slightly above normal for my age, which was great,” says Berry, who just turned 33. “So I just had to wait to heal.”
Berry then drew up a plan with her German coach, Ben Reszel (who also coaches fellow Kiwi Ironman Braden Currie), who believed there would be enough time for Berry to recover and race in not one, but two, world championship Ironman events this year.
“So I just pushed on with swimming or biking until it was time to reintroduce running again,” Tauranga-based Berry says.
She was back on her running feet just in time to contest the world Ironman 70.3 (or half Ironman) championship in Lahti, Finland, in late August. She finished 19th in one of the strongest female fields in the history of the event.
A few weeks later, Berry won her first Ironman title since 2021 – dominating the Cozumel Ironman 70.3 in Mexico.
And next Saturday, she’ll dive off Kona’s Kailua Pier to start her fourth full Ironman – in the race she’s been dreaming of for years.
Berry knows getting to the start-line on Hawaii’s Big Island is success in itself: “Especially after that tough start to the year”. But like any professional athlete, she’s not just there to make up numbers.
“As a professional you’re doing it because it's your job. It's not so much about completing it - you want a little more than that,” she says. “But at the same time, it's really cool just to be here and have the opportunity to race against this super-strong field.
“Every single top female triathlete is here racing this time. Often you'll get a few who pull out with injury or illness, but everyone is here - and really fit - this year, which hasn't happened for as long as I've been following the sport.”
And in this year’s race, the women’s event will stand alone - the men’s Ironman world champs were raced in Nice a fortnight ago (Currie the top Kiwi, in 16th).
“It’s really cool we get our own day,” Berry says. “I kind of wish the men were racing in the same location but on a different day. But it's nicer when we can have our own day and not be disrupted by the age group men getting in the way of our race.”
Berry, who quit her job in medical research in 2020 to become a fulltime triathlete, has been training through the iconic lava flows on the demanding Kona course for the past week. She’s been here before, but just as a spectator at the 2019 Ironman.
“I’ve heard you get better with experience in this race because the conditions are very odd. You’ve got the heat but also the wind swirls around different parts of the island - you'll often have a headwind that switches to a crosswind and then to a tailwind. The more you do this race, you know ‘Well this bit’s tough’, so you just push through.
“It’s definitely a tough, tough course. And I guess that's why people love coming here and conquering it.”
Berry has her husband, Nick, alongside her as her No.1 fan and support crew. A mortgage advisor, he’s continued to work as the couple have travelled over winter - to Noosa for two months training, Europe and Scandinavia, Mexico and now Hawaii.
“He's got to do his work each day, but he's also been super helpful. We bought a crappy $100 bike from Walmart and he rides along with me while I train and he carries water, because there’s no way to get any out on the course,” Berry says. “On race day, he’ll probably shoot some video on his phone and give me some time splits, but he’ll just be there supporting, really.”
Since she returned from her injury, Berry has had no problems with her hip or thigh. She’s really happy, she says, with how she’s running, considering the long time out of her running shoes.
“I'll be interested to see how I run on race day because I've been running well, but it’s the lowest volume of running I've done before an Ironman, just because I had to build up my volume cautiously, to avoid any reinjury,” she says.
Although it was a “shock to the system”, she thrived in her first experience of a world champs, at the Ironman 70.3 in Lahti. “I didn’t have time to brush off the cobwebs, but it’s so nice being in a big field, with people around you all the time, because time goes by so much faster," she says, happy with a top 20 finish.
Berry had time to work on her running speed before she raced in Mexico, where the humidity created a “really hot” half Ironman. “It was about 31 degrees [Celsius] on the course, but it felt like 39 when we were finishing the run,” she says.
Second out of the water, Berry was first onto the bike course and rode side-by-side with Australian Sarah Crowley, who she shook off on the 21km run to win just a minute shy of the race record.
“It was good practice for the heat in Kona, and a good chance to work out my race nutrition because it makes a big difference in the heat,” Berry says.
“You lose a lot of sodium through sweating, and if you don't replace it, you end up feeling pretty rubbish. So I take around 1000 milligrams of sodium every hour during the race, which is quite a lot when you consider the normal daily intake is like 2600 milligrams.”
Success for Berry next Saturday in her Ironman Kona debut – where she’ll be out in the sapping heat for around nine hours - will be putting together another “a decent day”.
“I’ll be looking at my own data and my own times, and I won't be paying too much attention to position because it's such a strong field. There probably won't be much between the athletes - across 10 placings, it could only be 10 minutes,” she says.
“I just want to have a good solid day across all three disciplines, gain experience and enjoy it. It's my job, but if I didn't enjoy it, then I wouldn't do it.”
