Adventure racing: Hard-earned second spot for Seagate

New Zealand team Seagate has completed an epic, six-day mission with a hard-earned second place in the Ecomotion World Series adventure race in Bahia, northeast Brazil.

Leader Queenstown-based Nathan Fa'avae added Wanaka's Dougal Allan at the last minute to his usual Adventure Racing World Championship-winning team-mates Sophie Hart and Trevor Voyce when navigator Chris Forne was injured.

Fa'avae said in a Facebook post the foursome was ''scratched and bruised'' after the 600-plus kilometres of trekking, running, mountain biking, kayaking, abseiling, using rope skills, swimming and caving.

He took on the navigation role but said his skills were ''not good enough, and too rusty to nav on the maps accurately''.

The 1:100000 scale was not detailed enough and had ''many inaccuracies'', he said. Allan's fiance, Amy Nunn, who had live-tracked the race online, said Seagate appeared to get ''a little bit lost'' on a trek stage and a mountain bike stage.

However, the team then stormed through the course to catch the winning team, Columbia Vidaraid, at a checkpoint near the race end but had to wait out a two-hour time penalty it copped in the prologue. Seagate eventually finished about 40 minutes behind.

Fa'avae saw the positive side to the race.

''As a team we were placed under a lot of pressure and we recovered well, learning a lot along the way, overall - the experience we shared was memorable,'' he said.

Allan is due home this week and will be fronting a question and answer session at Amigos Mexican Grill in Wanaka on Sunday at 4pm.