Backcountry Studio Adventure Racing Team

26/03/2026

It’s all about nutrition...

When I (Nico) started my AR journey, I wanted to know all the tricks to race better.
I looked into nutrition and I thought I should eat the same thing as Nathan Fa’avae, eat a snack every hour and then have a Real Meal (freeze dried food) every 5 to 6 hours.

It worked well for our first Godzone but it wasn’t perfect:
- Most of the freeze dried food tastes awful.
- It is bloody expensive.
- It rehydrates poorly and you often end up eating dry powder.
- It takes a lot of time to stop, find the jetboil, boil enough water for everyone and then wait 10 minutes before eating it.
- It’s not practical if you are travelling on long ridges without access to water, or if you are mountain biking or paddling.

After a few races where we tried different things, including making our own meals, we decided to ditch the jetboil all together, and exclusively eat snacks or food relying on cold water.

I naturally went for the following combo:
- Main meals: dehydrated smoothies, yoghurts, and cereals. A few ready made pasta meals for transition.
- Sugary snacks: lollies, chocolate bars, brunch bars, cookies, MnMs.
- Salty snacks: pretzels, pork crackle, Babybell, salami sticks, salted cashews.

While racing I was actually pretty satisfied with this combination, everything tasted great, we didn’t waste time preparing meals and I felt full of energy. Even when we spent an extra 16 hours on stage 4 and had to stretch our food, I never felt tired or overly hungry.
However, it felt completely different when I came back home.

At first I thought it was normal to feel exhausted and constantly hungry, so I didn’t question things too much. When Ira asked me how I felt, I said “I feel like the parody of a vegan in one of these stupid videos”.

After a week nothing improved, I was still exhausted, my legs were painful, (even when resting), brain fog, my hands and feet were numb, diarrhea every day, resting heart rate at 100bpm... and cherry on the cake I woke up one morning and realized I wet my bed. I didn’t do one of these dreams where you think you are on the toilet and wake up half way through it, I just woke up in a wet bed and I was clueless.

That was too much for comfort so I went to see my doctor, he organized some blood samples and I received the results the following day.

Everything was fine, except for one thing: my B12 levels were quite low.
The doctor recommended taking some supplements and my symptoms improved within a few days, I’m proud to say I don’t wet my bed anymore .

I felt a bit embarrassed, I had been racing for 6,5 days exclusively on sugar and carbohydrates, and I completely forgot about other essential nutrients, such as the B12.
It is an essential vitamin for the neurological, physical and cognitive system. When you do adventure racing, it is so hard on your body you actually need to include it more in your diet, and I did the complete opposite, 10 baby bells and 10 small salami sticks in 6.5 days didn’t cut it.

I also had a bad case of tendon casing inflammation on both ankles and the lack of B12 could have made it worse.
I am still trying to reflect on it, and I don’t have all the answers yet. Was it a good idea to drop the freeze dried food? Should I rely more on animal products snacks or should I change nothing and just bring B12 supplements for the next race?

I am not a big meat eater so my levels would have been on the lower side of what is considered acceptable. I could definitely consider supplements for before, during and after a race.
I will try to be smarter when the time comes to prepare for another race.

13/03/2026

Throwback to Godzone Chapter 12 thanks to Kirk who developed some pretty good pictures. The first one is a cracker.

10/03/2026

Sometimes you lose your marbles...
We started stage 4 of The MAGNIficent mid pack, where we had to navigate deep inside the Southland bush, with very little features to help us figure out our location, no tracks, no open tops, just small hills covered in dense vegetation top to bottom.
We started this stage by rushing ahead and missed the turn off in one of the only short track sections. 6h later, after looking for CP9 in the complete wrong location (“Black horn”), we decided to retrace our steps all the way back to transition and try again. This time we were in the correct spot and found the control, but still with difficulty.
We then moved towards CP10, a tree on an indistinct spur, we left an abandoned track too early, sidled for too long, wasted too much energy, so we headed down a creek junction to have a solid attack point, we set camp in the cold gully, half slept half shivered and collected CP10 first thing in the morning.
CP11 was straight forward, we followed a creek to the junction where we collected it without any difficulty. Maybe CP11 was too easy, because we headed straight away in the wrong direction, going up the wrong spur. The plan was to stay at 200m elevation all the way to CP12, a majestic waterfall. For some reason we lost our bearings and elevation, going down to the main catchment while we thought we were going across a side stream. There was a beautiful waterfall there, so beautiful it made us question ourselves, was it the CP12? Did we lose contact with the map and stumbled on the waterfall by luck? We stick to our original plan but the contours didn’t add up, nothing made sense with the map so we decided that was the correct waterfall (it wasn’t ) and came back to it.
And this is where we collectively lost our marbles. We retraced our steps but we couldn’t find the same waterfall again, there was one waterfall, but it was a different one, so we went up stream to find it, with no luck.
We then went down hill, where we were reassured by footprints (our own footprints) , went past another waterfall, but still, it wasn’t the same one! We lost all contact with the map and we had no clue where we were. We just knew we were somewhere along the main catchment in a 10km radius.
The truth, looking at the official tracking and Tim’s GPS watch after the race, is that we actually came back to the waterfall, twice.
We just didn’t recognize it, because we lost all sense of reality, the way we remembered the waterfall wasn’t how it was.
We took the desperate decision to head East and problem solve on the way to make contact back with he map. We had to get out of the Catlins bush eventually.
After 10h of walking and constantly deviating from the bearing (according to the GPS tracking), we identified two ridge lines on the map stacking up with what we could see. An easy way to find out was to go North, if we encountered a shallow gully, we were on the ridge line leading to TA, if it was a deep gully, we were on the next southern ridge line, which means we should then cross that deep gully and climb to the ridge line on the other side, leading us to TA.
Going North, we encountered a deep gully, we confirmed our hypothesis and we found our way out.
The Southland bush chewed us alive, played with our sense of reality, and made us lose our marbles.
We were thrown off by having a single detailed map, it revealed our biggest weakness, which was our inability to navigate as a team.
The Southland bush was unforgiving, the only appropriate approach was to use collective intelligence instead of relying on a single brain, especially when we are hallucinating!
In the end it was a great lesson and we have learnt so much from this experience, thanks to the Magni team for this humbling lesson, bringing us down to earth.

08/03/2026

Finish line picture! What an adventure it was. I wonder how long I will wake up at night thinking I'm lost in the Southland bush!

04/03/2026

Day 3 of Magnificent brought a lot of worry for supporters of Backcountry Studio as their tracker died as they were still in the thick Catlins bush. Who knows where they went, did they become one with the bush, were they fighting forest fairies and dragons, or was something wrong and they were taking care of each other??? Either way we think around midnight they stumbled into TA4. Probably surprised to see 17 teams still there. We'll wait for them to have their mandatory (and deserved) 8 hour sleep and see what the day brings them. Enjoy the pizza and hot showers team!

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DuS7835pg/

It's On! It was a chaotic scene early this morning as teams moved to get back onto the course. Transitioning in the cool 5AM darkness after a forced respite (but much needed for some teams that were nearly 60 hours with no sleep!) most teams were back to business.

Many had taken advantage of the ammenties available and the amazing Whistling Frog Resort - coffee, pizza, mini cabins, green lawns, showers - but some chose to rough it in the under the trees simply wrapped in mother nature's lush greenery. Others stumbled in from the stage 4 wilderness after midnight, totally unaware of the drama that had unfolded on the coast the previous day.

What will today bring? Warmer temps, lighter winds, sunnier skies, smaller waves, brighter minds, rested (but bruised) bodies - yes. But for some it will still not be enough if their resiliency has already been spent.

We wish all teams success today, and across the rest of the course, as the next stages promise much faster travel for those that can keep the wheels on.

It likely won't be all sunshine and rainbow from today on, but here's to wishful thinking.

02/03/2026

Day 2 of the Magnificent was less about speed of racing but precision of navigating. Our team had a few wobbles, no doubt as a result of a rough night the night before. But they have tenacity! They've been able to re-correct themselves and are still aiming for all the pro points. Go get 'em! Many great teams have struggled with the nav in this stage which shows just how difficult this terrain can be to navigate and move in. They should be feeling much better after a night's sleep and will no doubt still be having lots of fun together!

01/03/2026

So around 2am last night, team Backcountry Studio NZ were the last team of the leading pack to join the chaos at CP6. Teams had to bush bash their bikes down thick vegetation, it took our team about 7 hours to travel just over 1km! But they didn't appear to have lost any placings, still coming 10th, since about 8 teams skipped the entire bike orienteering section. Not sure if they managed to get any sleep in, they will be aiming to get to the next TA by early afternoon to get their first dose of sleep!

01/03/2026

Day 1 of Magni and team had successfully used their rogaine skills to efficiently get through stage 1 and then cruised down the Mataura River in rain, hail and sunshine. They've stayed a solid 10th place all day being in amongst some top adventure racing teams. Keep it going team!

28/02/2026

Swim test done with style ✅

27/02/2026

Registration ✅

The tracking page is up! The course and maps will be live Sunday, but save it in your bookmarks today. https://trackme.tracktherace.com/en/sports-events/adventure-races/the-magnificent

Check in has started, the energy of the teams and race staff feels like lightning! There is a ton of excitement over the new overview map being given out so early and I think teams are looking forward to the two coffee shops they will visit during the prologue today.

28/11/2025

The Godzone team pushed through on the first night and were obviously ready for sleep early this evening, selecting a sheltered spot in the valley. Pretty much all of the teams ahead will be stopping for sleep this night, allowing the team to ninja their way back into the mid-pack.