GODzone Adventure - Chapter 4
The Ultimate Team Bonding Exercise - The Supersubs
Rob Howard / 26.02.2015
The Super Subs are a team with a very international mix, including racers from Japan, New Zealand and Denmark ... and they have all only just met! There are many teams here who will have had to pull in a late replacement they don’t know to fill out the team, but it’s exceptionally unusual for 4 complete strangers to form an expedition race team – and for good reason.
Race Patron Steve Gurney took me over to meet them and commented, “If you ask me it’s a recipe for a complete disaster!” He was smiling though and did have some solid advice for the team.
“You are going to have to communicate really well,” he said. “You’ll all have low points and you can’t suffer in silence. You have to let someone know and all watch out for each other, especially because none of you have ever raced together before. I still can’t believe that!
“We used to have a 10 points system and make some fun with it. Like saying, ‘I’m a 10 right now, I could carry you all up that hill’, or ‘ I’m a zero, please bury me here and go!’ If you can manage to have a laugh you’ll help generate some new energy.”
Team captain Mike Rait added, “I think it could work to our advantage, we’ll communicate better because we are strangers and when we first met up on Wednesday we all went over our strengths and weaknesses and how we do things. And we already know we have to speak very clearly for Ayako to understand our accents. No mumbling!”
It was a lesson I hadn’t learnt. The team told me she had raced in the Patagonian Expedition Race and I asked if it was with Team East Wind. When she didn’t understand I tried again with no success. Mike changed tactic and asked which team she was in. “Oh, Team East Wind!”
The team came about after Deklan Hodsell entered, but then his team fell through and he sold the entry to Mike Rait, who invited him onto the team. Deklan has done multisport races before but its his first expedition race, while Mike has raced Godzone before. The two international women racers then joined the team later on. First was Ayako Nakazawa, then only two weeks ago Camilla Gry Ellman joined the quartet.
“I have only raced shorter races in Denmark,” she said, “and up to 60 hours at the Beast of Ballyhoura in Ireland.”
The team are hoping to be able to complete the full course, and they moved on around the gear check with the wise words of Steve Gurney to help them on their way.
You can follow the race on their live website at http://godzoneadventure.com and here on SleepMonsters.
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