After finishing the Tarawera Ultramarathon as the first Rotorua woman home, Sue Crowley looks set to turn her attention to something shorter.
Crowley finished her first full-distance ultramarathon in a time of 11:52:42 in 13th place on Saturday to back up her win in the Tarawera Trail 50km race in November.
"I'd like to have another go at the Rotorua Marathon because I've never done very well in that," she said.
She hopes the stamina she has built up in preparation for the ultra will help her put in a good performance.
"I've done [the marathon] three times, but never really conquered it, so that has to be done one day. The 42km is not daunting, [the ultra] puts that in perspective, so I might have a look at doing that I think."
Despite her placing, Crowley said Saturday's run was "slower than I had hoped".
"I think I didn't pace it well in the beginning section. It sounds ironic, but I went too slowly at the beginning and got really sore legs from all that and that sort of restricted me from then on.
"I think I panicked a bit about the distance and was being too careful at the beginning so I ended up with cramped legs for the first couple of hours."
Before the race she talked about her lack of experience in such a long distance race.
"It's hard to know. You've got to try these things to see what works and what doesn't, so that didn't particularly work for me. Fitness-wise it all worked and I wasn't tired at the end but had very sore legs on Sunday."
Met by the first of her two pacers with around 40km to go, he asked her "where have you been?"
"I got a lot of grief from my pacers who told me to hurry up, so I picked up a bit of pace but was well off the mark by then.
"But I managed to get to the end, which was good, especially when relatively early on I thought 'I can't possibly finish this'. It's amazing what you can do if you have to."
Often referred to as the Tarawera 100, the race is actually over 102km - something Crowley is keen to remind people.
"Certainly I've learned some lessons and it's a pretty cool thing to have done 100km. And two, don't forget the two.
"At the start you look at your watch every 10km or whatever, and then you're looking at your watch every 500m at the end, thinking, 'really?'. But it's a pretty cool event. It's amazing, the logistics, and they way they put it together; the organisation is amazing."
The Rotorua Trail Running Club and Lake City Athletic runner spent a year preparing for the event. Her pacers were Chris Corney and Bruce Edwards from Lake City Athletic Club.