
Nathan ran in (won?) the 2025 Revenant Ultra Adventure Race, completing two laps and being the "last one standing", running the furthest of anyone this year.
This is how Nathan was described to me (direct quote): "I've never met anyone who loves suffering so much."
Being coached by ultra-weapon Sam Harvey, this guy only has one mode - BEAST - making The Revenant the ideal race for him.
I caught up with him to hear about his experience, nutrition, training, and what it would take to complete what is undoubtedly one of New Zealand’s toughest endurance races.
He began by brushing off my congratulations. "Yeah, look, everyone who starts The Revenant has a pretty good nudge at it. The beauty of it is you don't really know what you're in for, and I think in my mind the reputation was you're just walking up and down a hill and getting scratched by spaniards and matagouri, and definitely while that happened, it was easily the coolest race I've ever been involved in." Humble as he goes.
I then asked him to explain the race format for any novices reading this. "So, I guess there's really only one outcome desired in many ways, and that's you're trying to do four laps of a course in various directions that more or less covers about 200 kilometres and 16,000 meters of elevation over that period. You're given a total of 60 hours to complete it, but you have time cut-offs for successive laps - so 17 hours for the first, 30 hours, and 45 hours going on to the last lap...It's based on the Barkley Marathons, which is quite a popular one on Netflix if anyone needs to have a watch of that. It's pretty cool story, but the slight difference point here is that [The Revenant] is all navigation. So you're given a compass and a map, you plot your markers, and then you go around the course.
"One core aspect, which going into it I thought would be maybe a bit of a mind f***, is you don't have a watch, which I found one of the most peaceful things ever, because it was either daylight or it was dark, and you just got on about sort of setting a pace that you could go and hold as long as you possibly could.
"The dudes who run it, the two of them, are really cool guys. They hate social media. They hate phones and various other things. So, it's a very reluctant Facebook update. For supporters that aren't actually there, it's no doubt quite frustrating, but all of that adds to a pretty awesome mission where it's just you and a couple of people trying to battle your way around a course, of which the navigation at times is a little bit tricky."
Me: "So it's four laps of 50kms, and you've got time cut-offs, but you can't wear a watch so you don't know what time it is or how close to the cut-offs you are?"
Nathan: "Funny enough, the old body clock kicks in and you do have a bit of a guesstimate for how you're playing because you broadly know when you started and know when sunrise and sunset is… but you find that over that sort of distance, you can't really go any faster than the pace that you seem to settle into. And while I say 50k loops and 4,000 meters of climbing, I would be very surprised at how accurate that is. I've felt like there's a sh!tload more climbing than that to be honest."
Me: "I hear you're a pretty handy navigator. Do you think that that gave you an advantage?"
Nathan: "Yeah, when it got tricky and I was alone then I felt very comfortable, which was good. But when most people were going around they were in big groups and that definitely made the whole process a bit easier…local knowledge would have been almost more important. It was only on a couple checkpoints that navigating was really required."
His entire race was about 35 hours (the lack of clocks meant he wasn't really sure) and he didn't take any sleep in that time, but said he didn't have any fatigue issues.
So what did he have an issue with?
"I ended up making a navigational error just at the end of the first lap. It was a rookie mistake, I was thinking about transition, I was thinking I already knew where the marker was, and I ended up losing about an hour looking for the marker - and, in doing so, just didn't take on water. I walked up the top of the hill, transitioned, and then walked up another bit of the hill, and got quite hot in that stage, and then that's when I got quite sick and basically from there on just couldn't digest normal food, carbs, or only very little amounts of it. So basically the whole nutrition plan went out the door, I was in survival mode I guess, just trying not to let the heart rate get too high because that would definitely make my head and body feel a bit funny. I probably got too dehydrated…I just timed a few things wrong and probably just didn't button off enough when I should have.
"I ended up getting really sick starting the second lap, and the only way to solve it was just to lie on the side of the track and feel sorry for myself. I was on the side of the track probably for a good solid two hours…being quite sick every couple hours, which was a bit annoying…I was still trying to fuel, but just not having a lot of success with it. So, it sort of ended up being the undoing."
What would it take to complete all four laps?
"You'd have to be pretty dialled…nutritionally you'd have to be perfect. And it's quite an interesting course in the sense that lot of the routes that we took wouldn't have been ones that I would have navigated myself…and then yeah, I think just have a pace that meant you could have not too big a lows, because the lows would have been easy to get into for a few hours and then you'd lose an hour here or there when the time frames were so tight."
Me: "Do you reckon people can do this race on real food?"
Nathan: "I think it's pretty easy to understate the power of carbs in some ways, but if you're continually fuelling yourself, and you're pacing yourself right, and you've got really good hydration, I think people could absolutely do on real food…I think you'd obviously be a little bit slower but in some years if the course is a little bit more straightforward, I think you'd be fine. But this one, I'd be really impressed if you just did it on real food."
How can I be like Nathan?
"Just been running…just trying to run as much as I can while balancing life and work and everything else like that. If anything, trying to focus on efficiency and a fair bit of shorter running and stuff like that. It was a little bit more specific on hills, running down hills, and trying to do a bit of heat adaptation, but yeah, by and large it was just trying to do miles."
Unfinished business?
"Totally. I think the future of the race is a bit uncertain, but I'd love to go back. Definitely got the bug, and keen to finish it. I think it's definitely finishable, but you have to have a pretty good day."
Nathan’s parting advice for future participants?
"I guess just get comfortable on the compass, like you really got to know bearings and how to read a map and how to find yourself when you're in the bush. And then yeah, I guess just plan to be walking up and down hills lots. So the stronger you can be, the better."
Congratulations, Nathan - sounds like it was a hard day in the office. Looking forward to hearing more stories of suffering in the future!
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