Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Sitting in a freezing pool isn’t much fun during a New Zealand winter, but a bunch of us at Icebreaker head office decided to make the sacrifice for a great cause.

The Heart Stoppers Challenge is an event run by  Heart Children New Zealand for the 450 kids each year who have open-heart surgery. During surgery, children are cooled down in icy slush to lower their heart rate.

In addition, we had an Icebreaker connection with the charity. Our colleague Jason Brown’s son, Adam, is a heart child. He had his nine-hour heart surgery at the age of six months, and spent a week at Starship Hospital in Auckland.

The challenge involves a team of four to six people getting together, choosing a dress theme (the crazier the better), and plunging into an icy pool for five minutes.  I convinced five colleagues to join me in this event: Jason, Grant Manson, Hamish Allan, Sarany Pan and Jacob Horan. Thoughts on costumes were coming out left right and centre, but the final verdict was “Nature and Beast”.

The day arrived – Friday, May 22 – and we were all hyped up and excited, ready for the plunge at 11.42am. The weather forecast for the day was 7°C, occasional showers, a risk of hail and a strong southerly…ouch!

The event started with a memorial service and a release for balloons featuring the names of children who hadn’t made it through surgery. It was an emotional moment.

Then we plunged into the 5°C spa pool.  Ever had the feeling of your heart beating a thousand miles per hour, with the feeling of needles everywhere through your body? A little extra body fat helps, but Jase was short of body fat so he really felt the pain. While we were sitting in the pool cursing, our colleagues surrounded us, cheering, taking photos and handing us beer.

After our five minutes were up, we were allowed a nice soak in a 39°C spa. By that stage, do you think we could even feel it? No!

As well as raising over $1,000 in donations, we won the best dressed prize out of 17 teams. A big thanks to all those who made a donation and supported us on the day.  It was a great cause and I’ll definitely be doing it again next year – and trying to reel in more participants.

- Chantelle Matenga, International Logistics Coordinator

Most of my friends dream of having a job that involves travel – and I’m not talking about a conference in Auckland or the annual teambuilding trip in the Wairarapa. In my two years with ‘Team EU’, I’ve been to Europe five times.  Most of the trips have centered around trade shows, which are an avenue to showcase our new ranges to current and potential buyers. The summer trade shows are my favourite – probably because I get to escape the torturous Welly winter.

I’ve been working at Icebreaker for just over three years now, starting out in the NZ customer service team. After less than a year in that role, an opportunity came up to move into a small team that looked after our European distributors.  I’m still there, but our EU markets have grown massively so my role is forever changing.

My last couple of Euro stints have been geared to helping with the set-up of our European-based teams and offices. It was hard-nuts at times, working some big hours to get things done, but in August when the first German sales go through our system it will all be worth it!  It’s a unique thing to be involved in – a Kiwi company making it worldwide!  In five years’ time, when our German office is booming, I can say I was there when their furniture was being delivered. That’s pretty cool.

While the weeks abroad can be full-on with work, the weekends…well, let’s say I’ve been a Kiwi girl making the most of being in Europe.

So far in 2009, I’ve been skiing in Austria and Switzerland, hung out in Gaudi’s Barcelona, had coffee in Amsterdam and saw more breasts than I’ve seen in my life at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. I’ve visited friends and family in London, twice, and I’ve lost my bags on trains in Munich, twice!

At 24, I really have had the best of both worlds. I get to see the world, and I get to live in the best country in the world. However,  I’m a firm believer in freaking yourself out every once in a while, and that’s exactly what I’m about to do – I’m moving to Switzerland to work with our crew there for a year. And because I can’t speak much French, I’ll probably be freaking myself out every day. Great! Can’t wait!

So big thanks to Icebreaker for all the doors you’ve given me to open. It has been a challenge, and a privilege. Looking forward the year ahead! EU is going to crank.

- Rebecca Ryan, Export Coordinator

Icebreaker has our very own Ironman – Makuini Warbrick!

Being a single girl I was devoting too much time to work! So I decided I needed something in my life that would 1) keep me to normal work hours 2) be a goal big enough I couldn’t fake 3) be a goal big enough that I couldn’t leave it to the last minute 4) take care of my health.  Ironman fit the bill.

I’ve thought for a long time that Ironman was cool and would be an awesome feat but that it was for someone else.  Then I found myself needing a goal above and found my reason to do Ironman.  I’m not a girl who has exercise on the brain – in fact my brain is not wired like that in the slightest, but working at Icebreaker, well, I’m surrounded by crazy people who’ve swept me up into their world of exercise and competing in events.

I decided to do this 48 weeks out from Ironman NZ, 7 March 2009. My training included lots of swimming, biking and jogging – I’m a swimmer so I loved the swimming part.  I hadn’t been on a bike for 10 years, so buying a bike and learning how to ride a road bike was interesting and ultimately I came to like it. Running, on the other hand, I didn’t like – and only had a major mental breakthrough just 6 weeks before Ironman.

Most of my training was by myself (others at work were training for an event 3 weeks before mine).  I did have a cycle group I rode with on a Sunday that brought my bike fitness from 0 to 1.5hrs.  Most of the inspiring athletes at Icebreaker are faster than me, but I was game and went out a few times on the bike with them.  A friend from work, an ex-swimmer, became my swim training buddy which was vital in getting started cause having someone waiting for you at 6am was another good reason to train the body to get up at 5.30am.  I ended up joining a swim squad and found other crazy people with the same goal.

Before Ironman day, I had completed two half Ironmans, so the longest run I covered was 21km and the longest training ride I did was 130km. 

Ironman was fabulous – I had a great day.  An Ironman couple (both completed Ironman 2007) made a point to tell me to ‘make sure you enjoy the day. You’ve done all this training so enjoy the whole day!’

I DID IT!  I have great friends at Icebreaker and was privileged to have 10 of them make their way to Taupo to support me. I had a brief moment where I spazzed out at my brother cause he made a comment I didn’t like, but other than that – all good.

Training for 48 weeks is a LONG time so having people around asking how my training was going helped keep me on track.  The flip side to having lots of people know what your goal is, is that you can’t wimp out.  I was doing the Rotorua Half Ironman event and was having a tough time on the bike and wanted to give up, but what kept me going was that one of the guys from work did Around Taupo with an arm in a cast so the only viable reason not to finish was that I was in hospital and I wasn’t prepared to go to those lengths!  So some days you have to suck it up, others you enjoy, and once you’re in the finish chute of Ironman, you forget about it all.

Coming down the finish chute I was extremely happy and proud plus amazed that I was still in good form and spirits.  All that hard work, $$ spent, knowledge gained had paid off – I fulfilled my goal – I am an Ironman.  WOW! 

One of my favourite quotes is ‘define success in terms of your own potential’ I didn’t break any records, but my goal was to complete Ironman – and I did.  Now I wonder what other potential I have in me?

- Makuini Warbrick, Icebreaker Head Office