Sports timing new zealand8/8/2023 ![]() He’s an event organiser in Auckland, but he’s most famous for coming up with the idea of running the Hillary Trail, a 74-kilometre route along Auckland’s west coast. I recognise Shaun Collins, who looks like a strawberry-blond Santa Claus with his permanent grin and wild long hair. By the time they crossed the finish line, they were friends. They met towards the end of a 171-kilometre race called Cruel Jewel in the state of Georgia, battling each other through the final leg. ![]() Shawn served as an aviation rescue swimmer. Chadd is in the process of retiring from the SEALs, the Navy’s special operations force. They’ve been attracting a lot of attention because they’ve already done some of the most certifiably difficult things people can think of. They’re opposites: Chadd Wright is affable and expressive, while Shawn Webber is quieter, stern. Thick fog blanketed the course for the first 14 hours-on the previous spread, Tim Sutton emerges near checkpoint 11.Īt the front of the room is a team of two United States Navy veterans. Runners had only a few hours to study the course map, and plan their route between checkpoints. Except for me-because I want to know who has a shot at finishing it. No one is looking over their shoulder at anyone else. Eventually, I figure it out: no competitiveness. There’s an odd feeling in the room, something missing. There will be no GPS devices, no phones, no watches. The only navigational aid they’re permitted is a base-plate compass. When they pass through home base between loops, they’ll get a medical check-up, and if they’re not in good shape, they won’t continue. They must finish two loops in 30 hours, three in 45 hours, and four in 60 hours. When competitors finish one loop, they return around the checkpoints in the opposite direction. Runners will navigate their way around a loop of 14 checkpoints, which they must visit in order, tearing a numbered page from a notebook at each checkpoint to prove they were there. The map encompasses Blackmore Station, on the hills east of Garston, and it’s constellated with red dots. Scott and Leroy hand out large, glossy topomaps, two for each person, and the runners bend over them hungrily. Ideally it will take several attempts for someone to truly understand the land, to train for it properly, to run it perfectly. Scott and Leroy, two extremely fit men from Alexandra who also run milers for fun, greet the 21 people as though they’re long-lost friends, but they hope that none of them will finish the course they’ve designed. It’s a spooky word, and it means a person who comes back after a long time, usually from the dead. The organisers of the run, Scott Worthington and Leroy de Beer, have called it the Revenant. ![]() Among them are a high-school history teacher, a furniture upholsterer, a lawn-mowing contractor, two doctors, a nurse, an air-traffic controller, two current members of the military, two former members of the military, and a guy sailing around the world on a 28-foot yacht. Information about the run was revealed little by little to Revenant contenders at a woolshed on Blackmore Station. They test their mettle not at marathons but ‘milers’, 100-mile races, or 160 kilometres, about four times the marathon distance. To them, a 24-hour run in the nearest national park isn’t a particular achievement, it’s a pretty good way to spend a Sunday. The people here have already covered distances unfathomable to the average person. ![]() Another contracted dengue fever during a training run in Papua New Guinea. A few dropped out, for forgiveable reasons. That’s if they navigate correctly, because there won’t be a track.Įach person has been selected and vetted. It will be the most difficult one they’ve ever attempted: roughly 190 kilometres long, climbing a total of 16,000 metres, which is like running up and down Mt Cook four times. They don’t know where it will be, or when it will start. Twenty-one people meet at the pub in Garston to go for a run. ![]() Written by Rebekah White Photographed by Julian Apse ![]()
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