Off the back of the True West Adventure race in December, Tiger Adventure New Zealand had a few things to work on. Aside from that, it was nice to be rolling into a race with a bit of an idea of how the team would work together. We had a thorough debrief after True west but I will admit I was worried that the lessons we learned were possibly not going to change much. This left me quite anxious leading into the race, but I held out some hope that the closer to the race we got, the more excited I would get. Around 4 weeks before the race we had a team meeting, basically all 4 of us had a health ..read more

Third time around, this race orgainisng thing seemed a lot easier, all the elements of the plan were all slotting nicely in to place… that was up until one week to go! We had planned for the possibility that one of us (Tim, Bin or Myself) might get Covid in the build, but for it to happen just 5 days our was a bit of a shock to the system. Lucky for us… and maybe unlucky for us… Tim and his family caught it. So lots of the on the ground bits of the race fell to me, Bin and her team were able to handle all the organizational stuff, while Tim, from isolation was able to manage all the online stu ..read more

Godzone in Akaroa was a bit of a different beast this year. With the stalwarts of Mitch and Stru taking a back seat for 2019 I was left a bit low on teammates. After some inter-island chat with Anna and Bobby we formed a threesome which allowed the Sneaky Weasel Gang legacy to continue. We were reasonably organised and had lined up another prospective Weasel, but by around September he pulled out, and so began the journey to find the elusive 4th member. Early on it seemed like it was going to be an easy task, but it took several months and with only 6 weeks before race day we enticed Angus to ..read more

Godzone always take an age to recover and get over completely, it takes months until you might be back to normal…. so I was glad that 6 weeks afterwards I was sitting firmly behind the scenes of the Kaikoura Adventure Race. This edition was postponed a year due to Covid, and I feel on reflection the way we went about postponing it worked out really well. At the time there was a lot of confusion out there and it might have been easy to panic and prematurely pull the trigger on the postponing, and equally it might have been easy to panic and not postpone until it was too late. I felt like our fi ..read more

Note: I originally wrote this in the remaining hours before the start of the 2017 Cameco Cowboy Tough and Adventure Racing World Champs. I never quite got around to publishing it… until now! We had a really good time doing some last minute training and getting used to the environment pre-race so it was pretty fun having a look back on one of the all time best trips I have been on. With a couple of days under our belts in Colorado and some good training at altitude, it was time to move on to Casper ahead of the race. We had a bit of time to muck around to get in some more biking before our pack ..read more

I’ve been Orienteering for many years and I think I can count the number of “perfect” or near perfect races I’ve had on one hand. The 2021 Godzone came close to the Weasels 2017 race, it felt like we dropped the ball for about 12 hours in total across 3 early stages. I was hoping to be back in the hunt for the perfect race when 2022 rolled around but life had other plans for the other three….and suddenly I found myself without any team mates. Part 1 – Sorting out a team I fell straight into the FOMO trap when Godzone entries opened. I also worried that the Weasels would disappear from adventur ..read more

It was a long road to Godzone in Rotorua, originally scheduled for November 2020, Covid-19 forced some changes bumping out the date until March 2021. As well as the date change the format was also altered with the addition of support crews for all teams, so this year was always going to be a bit different. With preparations well underway, I did a quick trip up to the Uratawa’s with Bobby to scope out the terrain a bit. With 1 weekend to go in the middle of packing, Auckland was thrust into level 3 lockdown, while the rest of us into level 2. Godzone had prepared for something like this to happ ..read more

After the World Rogaine Champs, we arrived back on Thursday morning, just in time for work! So after one weekend of rest it was straight back into the swing of things and by Friday I was jumping back on another plane to travel up to the Whangamata 12hr race with the Weasels. Bobby and Anna had just come of the back of Calving, I was still recovering from jet lag and Matt who we had roped into join us had not raced such a long adventure race before. So it would be fair to say we were not in peak condition and with some fairly constant rain setting that evening and facing a 2:30am start the next ..read more

Not long after Godzone last year an email popped up in my inbox from Bin Kennedy in Kaikoura, who arranged for me to come up and teach some navigation skills at the High School back in 2018. This time Bin had another idea, an event that involved running or biking and using some farms local to the Kaikoura Area as a fundraiser. I have a bit of a background in organising large Orienteering events… but nothing as diverse as an Adventure Race. I knew Tim was keen to organise another race and was on the look out for an opportunity  so I got in touch with him and the idea of an Adventure Race w ..read more

With Christmas falling on a Tuesday in 2018 that meant that there was a weekend between work finishing and Christmas day. A perfect window to do a trip halfway between Wanaka and Christchurch, a midway point for Ryan and I before heading to Dunedin. We initially had plans to climb a mountain, but then Riki caught wind of our plans and we thought it might be fun to include him. Due to his training for Coast to Coast and the possibility of hurting himself, his inclusion came with the caveat that we avoid snow and ice. To accommodate this we had to think up a new plan… With plan b, we opted for a ..read more