GODZone
Merrell Adventure Addicts - Expeditions & Expectations
Press Release / 07.03.2018
Nothing about GODZone Adventure is easy. But I imagine it is especially difficult for a team to arrive after an 80 hour trek, set their alarm, pack up 90minutes later in the freezing cold and set off on dirty bikes for another 24 hour leg, with a further 3 stages to go after that, and hear that the front team has just been handed their beers and pies, 250km away.
I imagine cycling on into the night, sleep-pedaling for the short stretch of road before having to carry bikes through cold rivers, whacking shins on tree-stumps when getting in to the forest with the tricky navigational section, stopping at a junction while the navigator turns the map around and asks if someone has the spare compass and just wanting to sit down right then and stop. Stop moving. Stop thinking of the heinous, trackless jungle pit that is waiting at dawn and stop hurting.
The race is won after all (and massive congratulations to Team Yealands).
Which brings up the question – why race at all if you know you are not going to put the first footprints in the mud? Why go to the movies if someone with big hair is going to sit in front of you?
Merrell did not come to Godzone to try and beat all the Kiwis in their home ground. That would be daft.
They came, with Stefan, to complete an epic - epicker, the epickest - event which the majority of people cannot comprehend as even possible. And they are well on their way to doing just that and are even hoping for a top twenty placing.
So I stopped imagining because there are facts to be gathered and asked some experienced South African racers for their opinion on how it feels to keep going.
From fellow Merrell maestro, Tiny Donovan Sims :
“Knowing that the winners are already in can throw a whole new array of thoughts at you....on the one side it gives you something to look forward to and on the other hand , should you be in "The Dark Place" it can be quite demoralizing. It is at this point where the senior member of the team will have to take charge and pull the rest of the team through by picking up the spirits of the team using something like, “If the winners can do it, WE CAN TOO!
It depends on the personalities of the team as to how they will view that info.
Captain Tweet knows how to handle it, and he will. The force is strong in that one!”
Clinton Mac of Cyanosis Adventure Racing Teams: “The logical reply would be that it depends on what your team’s objectives are or were. If you went there simply to participate then it really doesn’t matter and you just focus on the teams around you. You certainly want to beat them - that lights the fire in your soul when you’re racing - to be in front of the team you’ve been jostling with for a few days.
However from a competitive angle, the honest and direct answer is, it sucks!
Your focus does change when you first learn of the winners coming in and you’d certainly be racing with your own demons. The team needs to be managed well after that so it can move back to being focused on their end goal.”
Castle Lite Adventure Racing Team’s Adrian Vincent Saffy: “We all go through very dark moments in a race. To operate in those dark spaces differentiates this from any other sport.
You definitely race the teams around you and your world becomes that you don’t care about winners you compete in your “zone” so it’s definitely still a race ... It gets you to the finish line faster, and cut off times keep you moving”
Fellow Merrell teammate Tatum Prins: “Ahhhh, I have so much FOMO right now. I wish I was out there for so long!
Ok, initially, on hearing that news, there will be a big slump in morale and a bit of wallowing in that, but all it takes is for someone to lighten the mood and everybody’s good to go again. If you’re not going to win, you make sure you get the best possible time and ranking for your team.
Tweet, Grant and Jane are experienced and will be used to this – those unique and extreme highs and lows that typify AR. For Stefan I think it will be more difficult, being his first one, it will be very difficult. But they’ll all be fine!”
Nikki Smit says she’s normally “racing the teams around us and just focus on staying out of trouble, beating those who we can”
I started the same conversation with Nathan Faavae this afternoon at the finish line. I have an award winning picture in my head of him standing looking down, completely perplexed at the sight of footprints ahead of him.
The five times world champion of the sport just doesn’t have to look at bums in front of him.
This year however, he knew he wasn’t racing for first. His wife was competing with him in her first adventure race longer than 12 hours and although when they crossed the line only 12 feet had passed in front of them – Avaya came a remarkable 4th – it wasn’t his accustomed position. Nathan himself looked at me with glazed eyes and said “Yeah. Yeah right.” Seven days on the move doesn’t make for lucid conversation from anyone.
Teammate Dan was also in a daze but told me they’d been “on expedition, not racing. It didn’t feel like we were racing other teams, we were on our own trip. We met up with PwC several times so we did want to beat them” (and so they did).
Our team Merrell will be out for a couple of days yet. But they will finish. This is the goal. And just as Saffy said, they have been chasing the cut-offs yesterday and today and have leapfrogged several teams already.
So the race has been won but for every other team still out there, they are living their own expedition. Loving it. Hating it. Questioning it. Doing it. Defining Vasbyt with every step.
And living to tell the stories that we will get on Friday!
SleepMonsters
