Orion Health Godzone Adventure Race

Team Seagate Captain's Race Report

Nathan Fa’avae / 21.03.2013

The 2013 Orion Health Godzone Adventure Race took place in early March on the back of an incredible summer in the Queenstown region with nearly 2-solid months of hot sunny weather with McKenzie country and Canterbury experiencing drought conditions, not pleasing for farmers and the animals but largely enjoyed by summer fun seekers.

Our team won the inaugural Godzone in 2012, a 4-day wilderness jaunt from Milford Sound to Queenstown. We thoroughly enjoyed the race, the course and the return of expedition racing to our homeland. It was stuff that sent shivers down our spines and led to great anticipation and excitement about racing Godzone again in 2013, a team phrase developed that was said many times throughout 2012 … ‘Godzone – ohhhh yeahhhhhh’.

Winning Godzone in 2012 had a lot of significance for us. Firstly it was the homecoming race for our sport, the last race had been the AR World Championships in 2005, a race my team won and which marked my retirement from AR (cough). Godzone was also the first major race for our newly established foursome. We had won the Tierra Viva race in Patagonia in February 2012 but the Godzone was an international quality field so it was our first chance to run the team against top-level competition.

Personal Motivation & The Competition

For me it had some personal motivation. A decade earlier I had read a book, which contained a few words of wisdom about life. One of the snippets was suggesting to people (especially males) that for their 40^th year, take a year off work and do something you’re passionate about. For 10-years I had this thought and goal in mind, and while I couldn’t stop work altogether, I did manage to set up my 40^th year with a lot of flexibility and freedom.

As it turned out, my 40^th birthday was the day before Godzone in 2012. My 40^th year largely revolved around Adventure Racing, winning the World Champs again and with the shift of Godzone from April to March, I managed to pick up another Godzone win in my 40^th year, so all up, I feel quite proud of that – perhaps in the world of AR, 40 is the new 40?

With Godzone moving to March, it meant the day before the race this year was my team mate Sophie Harts 30^th birthday and she informed the team she wanted the Godzone trophy for her birthday present. That seemed fair enough.

Because I’m living in Queenstown this year it made preparing for the race extremely easy and also a bit smoother for the team, being a New Zealand race and having a base to plan and sort gear.

As the defending Godzone winners and also the current World Champions we were marked as the race favourites. Some picked the race to be between Team Thule and us but while we have a huge respect for the team, we never regarded them as a major threat in this race as they lacked their lead navigator from Sweden, Per Vestling who possesses an inbuilt Silva navigation system. Godzone is one race where navigation is a vital skill to possess.

For this reason we predicted that Team Harraways Oats (H-Oats) containing Aaron Prince, Stu Lynch, Dougal Allan and Jess Simsonwould be the team most likely to contest for the win. Any team racing on porridge is going to go well. For the record, Harraways Oats are my staple start to the day - I eat them for breakfast.