Loonie Races, Knee Knackers and Comfortably Numb: Those are the names of just some of the events Canadian endurance coach Val Burke has put her charges through over the years.
Now living and working in Wanaka, Burke (40) says those event names relate to a characteristic of the race.
For example, Canada's popular Loonie Races are named after the entry fee, a dollar coin.
They are not meant to imply multisport athletes are nuts - "although of course they are".
The former University of Otago physical education masters graduate and High Performance Centre sports science co-ordinator has a soft spot for multisporters and triathletes, although she has worked with a variety of national squads in several sporting codes, including basketball, which she played at collegiate level in North America.
She enjoys multisporters for their self-sufficient personalities and self-deprecating humour.
She really liked the refreshing attitude displayed by one of her proteges, who noted multisporters were usually older people who thought they might have achieved some minor sporting glory in the distant, dark age of their youth - "but in reality we all really suck".
"They seem to share universal characteristics," Burke said.
" That's why I love working with them . . . At the highest level you might have some egos but in general they are really relaxed, especially in New Zealand."
Burke, her Kiwi builder husband John and their three children, twins Luke and Samantha (8) and Ruby (6), returned from Canada in January to live in Wanaka.
The couple met in the 1990s when Burke, a native of Terrace in northern British Columbia, was cycle-touring New Zealand.
They lived for a while in Canada and then, in 1995, Burke decided to complete her masters degree in exercise physiology at Otago University.
From 1997-2000 she worked at the university's High Performance Centre and later, after returning from maternity leave, worked for a year as an athlete liaison officer for the Dunedin Academy of Sport.
After that, she moved to Whistler.
There, she found although there was a triathlon club, there were no testing labs and few experts in other disciplines, such as sports psychology or nutrition, to whom she could refer clients.
The scene was vastly different from Dunedin's, where Burke had been a regular competitor for several years and had nutrition and sports psychology experts at her fingertips.
She persevered and researched other disciplines to bridge gaps in her coaching knowledge.
Seven years later, some of Canada's top endurance athletes such as Will Routley, Gary Robbins and Marie-Anne Prevost have Burke to thank for their successes.
Those with far less lofty goals have also called on her expertise in helping them achieve their potential.
Burke is still coaching 15 Canadian athletes via the Internet and is steadily building up a new following in Wanaka with one of her new proteges, rookie professional Ironman triathlete Merryn Greenwood (31), who was 15th in Challenge Roth on Monday.
Burke has also instituted a Challenge Wanaka "camp" for athletes keen to compete in the long distance triathlon in January.
She has also started working for the Academy of Sport again, assisting freeskiers and snowboarders on the Winter Olympics high performance programme.
In some ways, moving to Wanaka was deja vu.
Despite the large number of multisport enthusiasts in town, Burke found the scene was fragmented into informal training cells.
There was no overarching Wanaka club scene where newcomers or visiting athletes could hook up with like-minded individuals.
Burke likened Wanaka to Whistler several years ago, when it had no central triathlon information hub.
"By the time I left, they had such a good system. The whole level just rose. But it was the community that drove it," she said.
In the meantime, if there's one thing Burke would really like her growing cell of multisporters to do, it is to ride their bikes more often.
Burke rides her bike around town every day, even in winter, to her appointments, to take her children to school and to do her shopping.
In the past five months she has clocked up 1500km on her commuting bike - and that does not include training kilometres.
"I've commuted by bike all my life," she said.
"Even in Dunedin I biked every day from St Clair to university and back and I never owned a vehicle until I blew my knee in and got one for six weeks."The Burke family does own and use a car but Burke says commuting by bike means if she gets really busy and cannot train, she knows she's still averaging 50km a week.
"I can get on my bike any time and ride 60km simply because of that," she said.
"It's the multisporters who should be commuting by bike. They should be the ambassadors."
