"The last race I did before the Philippines was the World Championships in November. So it had been a good three months between then and the Philippines. It was a good three months of training during our amazing New Zealand summer and the training must have paid off. Rotorua, New South Wales and Malaysia were all really close together. It was three races in about four weekends, so it was bang, bang, bang. I needed to have a good training base behind me for those races because I wanted to do well in all of those events, and luckily I did."
Orchard has a Bachelor of Technology (Food) with Honours, from Massey University and she works part-time for a company in Auckland.
"I have been working part-time for about a year now and I think that may be one of the major reasons why this past at least six months has really started to go well. I am reaping the benefits of working part-time. It still means I have to get leave during the year though, but my work is really flexible and they have been really helpful so far."
The XTERRA Asia-Pacific Tour champion had a break after returning from Malaysia and she will take a bit more time to decide what to do between now and the XTERRA World Championships in Maui in October and the ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships at Lake Crackenback, Australia in November.
"There's not a lot of time between the two World Champs, which is great because I can get a good training base in and then do a couple of races during that time and then peak for the two big ones. It's a great location for the Kiwis because Australia isn't too far away. We had a pretty big team at the Cross Tri World Champs last year and they were in Italy, so hopefully we can get an even bigger team this year. All the XTERRA races until then are in the United States or Europe, so whatever I decide to do I'll have to save up and do a trip."
The ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships are 19-20 November 2016 at the Snowy Mountains, Australia. Tri NZ High Performance are calling for expressions of interest for both the individual and relay elite events.