Godzone Adventure Race
Seagate Head for the Coast While the Back Markers Struggle to Escape the Mountains
Rob Howard / 10.03.2014
The overnight Dark Zone on the Hurunui River may have stopped the leaders Seagate and the chasing pack for a while, but even a long stop wasn’t enough to allow the teams further back to catch them up.
When the front of the race resumed at 07.30 on a bright, sunny morning the position at the front was unchanged, with Seagate well ahead, and now well rested.
The 5 teams chasing them and battling for podium places had a mass re-start as they had gathered at the start of the paddle stage at TA6. This is one of inevitable problems of dark zones – it splits the field and bunches teams up – but there is little option if a route includes white water paddling and teams can build the stop into their logistical plan.
Two teams did opt not to push onto TA6, stopping on the previous trek to sleep more comfortably in huts and aiming to arrive at the transition for the lifting of the dark zone, which they did. Absolute Wilderness and Chimpanzee Bar both had long stops on the trek and it looks like Absolute Wilderness were camped out at Gabriel Hut.
They should have arrived at transition sharp and ready to go, but managed to forget their Yellowbrick tracker, a mandatory piece of kit. (I know you are all following them on the live site but it is primarily for safety, publicity comes second.) Fortunately they realised and backtracked off-river to retrieve it, losing substantial time, and race officials said there would be no further penalty as they’d retrieved it and self-penalised.
Behind the lead teams the rest are still some distance back, spread out along the Molesworth Station ride, and the Glynn Wye Range trek. Most are on the trek and the youngest team in the race, ‘Next Generation’ are leading this group.
Their combined age is just 89 years. They are being chased by Team Proactive Physio, and according to the website their team captain, Brent Hendersen is 99 years old! Di Liddell from the UK is in this team, and is the leading international athlete in the race. The top visiting teams BMX Bandits (Aus) and Checkpoint Zero (USA) are a little further back, in 15th and 17th places through TA5.
In general the visiting teams are having a hard time. Merrell Alpha Pack (Int) and Moxie Racers (Ireland) are both unranked due to injuries and there is a pack of Australian teams right at the back of the race. Some are still finishing the first trek and are strong candidates to get caught by the race cut-off, which is part way down the Hurunui river paddle and comes into effect at 13.00 on Thursday.
If Seagate decided to go round again they’d probably lap them! This is the difficulty for race organisers who want to test all abilities, but find their resources very stretched. At the moment teams are spread across more than 250km of wilderness terrain, some moving fast, others hardly at all.
They could perhaps have included an earlier short cut option, but this isn’t easy given the terrain and is not really in the Kiwi adventure racing psyche anyway. They favour the old school, “here is the course try and finish it” approach but have compromised here with a cut-off is option to bring slower teams home and allow them to finish under their own steam. (A much better option than pulling them off the course.)
Two ‘modern’ expedition race trends they also avoided are a mandatory stop, and compulsory team blogging during the race. The two often go together and with all of the teams having to stop for the Dark Zone on the river there was no need for an enforced stop. (Nor were there good enough internet connections at central transitions for a blog.)
Like short course routes neither of the options is really favoured in the traditional Kiwi AR outlook, so they were probably not something they wanted in include anyway. (Preferring to allow teams to manage their own sleep and avoid including keyboard and writing skills and as a discipline.)
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