The annual Coast to Coast is now just over two months away, the multi-sport gutbuster a bucket list item for many Kiwi athletes.
It's certainly been a drawcard for worldwide adventurer Holly Budge, the 41-year-originally from the UK now gearing up for a crack after scaling the likes of Mt Everest.
The enormity of the 243km slog is slowly sinking in.
"The kayaking will be really tough," she told 1 NEWS.
"Having little to no knowledge of the river, and being able to read the river it'll be interesting we'll see how that goes.
She says it'll be a big challenge, but "I know I've got the mental endurance for it".
"After climbing the big mountains, I definitely know I have the mental ability to push through."
Budge's long list of achievements began in Taupō in her 20s, a skydive giving her the taste for life on the edge. That taste resulted in her becoming the first woman to skydive from Mt Everest in 2008.
She returned to Nepal nine years later, this time scaling the mountain, before setting her sights on one of the Wonders of the World - the Great Wall of China.
Before that though, she'll go through another two months of intense training before tackling the Mt Everest of multi-sport.
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