Well-travelled Mount Maunganui triathlete Janine Sax is getting used to the vagaries of competing across the globe.
A few weeks after she shrugged off the pre-race cancellation of the 4km swim leg because of frigid temperatures and severe dehydration to finish ninth in the pro-elite field at the ITU World Long Distance championships in Las Vegas, the 31-year-old has had a taste of the other extreme as she prepares for this weekend's Asia-Pacific 70.3 championships in the Thailand resort of Phuket.
Sax arrived in Phuket direct from the United States and has spent the past week getting acclimatised to the bath-like water temperatures and Thai wildlife - on land and in the sea - while taking part in a warm-up race, the Laguna Phuket triathlon, this week.
Sax did the first two legs of the triathlon, a 1.8km swim and 55km bike ride, as part of a team on the same course as the 70.3 race, where she's now the only New Zealander competing as an elite after Bryan Rhodes (Taupo) and Cameron Brown (Auckland) pulled out.
"The ocean seemed like about 28C. There were millions of little jellyfish particles that felt like ... sharp barbed-wire and electric shocks," Sax said.
"The water in the lagoon [on the second leg of the swim back to the swim/bike transition] wasn't particularly clean so I made certain not to take in any gulps of water."
The drama continued on the bike leg on rutted tarseal, with the cyclists dodging dogs sitting in the middle of the road.
But after turning in the fastest swim and bike splits in the teams' division Sax is feeling strong heading into the most popular 70.3 race on the international circuit, with the field looking as good as the ITU world champs, all chasing a slice of the US$75,000 ($98,712) prize purse.
Sunday's race will take a novel approach to the swim leg, taking triathletes across two bodies of water - a 1.28km opening swim, a 100m beach run and 620m final leg in a tropical lagoon, followed by a hilly 90km ride and 21km run that takes in the Laguna Phuket golf course.
Sax has been scrambling to rebuild her bike after Customs took all her bolts and screws as she left the US. "I wasn't happy, especially when I discovered that I couldn't get [replacement parts] in Phuket.
"I've adjusted well to the different climate and time-zone - it's a complete contrast to arriving in Nevada after New York and the New Zealand winter ... the temperatures are twice that of Nevada."
The traditional post-race massage might also be put on ice after Sax, already muscle-weary, was given a decent working over after the warm-up race. "[The massage] hurt more than climbing the steep hills.
"It was difficult to give feedback when they don't understand English and I don't speak their language ... [but] having someone beat the crap out of the soles of my feet was not quite what I had in mind after a race.
"I now know how to say 'ouch that hurts' and 'stop' - it's 'chan jab kha' and 'yut kha!"'