“It’s just survival really isn’t it? You just hang in there for a long time until you eventually get to the end.”
During February, TV star and New Plymouth resident Hadyn Jones, completed the 102km Tarawera Ultra-Trail, finishing in the darkness at around 10.15pm after a 7am start, in a time of 15: 21:15.
“I never would have thought years ago that I could run this far,” the 49 year-old says.
Yes, he’d done the occasional half marathon over the years and still went jogging semi-regularly, but admits he was a mid-life crisis waiting to happen.
“I was doing a Good Sorts shoot (March 2022) and was walking along the Routeburn Track with a DOC ranger and we had about three hours before we got to the hut,” he remembers of how his ultramarathon journey began.
“We had time to explore all sorts of issues and he was telling me how he’d run the Kepler Challenge and I asked about the training. He said he had to go out most weekends and kind of walk/run all these Great Walks to get fit and ready to go.
“And I thought ‘that sounds like way too much training — I’ve got three kids and a wife and not a lot of free time, I’m never going to do that’. Somehow the internet must have been listening in the bush cos I got home and there was a post on my Facebook feed about the Kepler Challenge and I clicked ‘interested’.
“Ten minutes later I get a call from my mother, who’s a great internet sleuth, who asked ‘Are you doing the Kepler Challenge?’
“I said ‘No I’m not’ but I guess my curiosity must have been pricked.”
The following year he did the Kepler Challenge for the first time, a distance of 60kms, in 8 hours, 1 minute. Being that close to going under eight hours, he had to give it another go in 2024, and logged 8 hours 20 mins.
“I don’t have a training plan and I don’t have a diet — I’m not great at planning and organising that kind of thing. I kind of run when I feel like it, within reason, because you have that kind of nagging guilt (that you should be training).
“I still like a beer after a run and the family bag of potato chips is usually just for me — I’m a family of one in that regard. I haven’t really changed my lifestyle.”
On the weekends he’ll explore the mountain when the weather’s good.
“It’s a great playground. The Pouakai Circuit, that takes about 6 – 7 hours. It’s like a day out, you take a packed lunch, snacks and water, run into people for a chat, put on your headphones and listen to a podcast or an audiobook or some eighties power ballads.”
So what’s on his playlist?
“I’m a real binge music guy and at the moment I’m into Noah Kahan, an American singer/songwriter, and I’ll thrash it until I’m sick of it and then move onto someone else.”
He’s also partial to what he refers to as ‘dessert for the mind’.
“Because we lived in Canada for a while, I’ll listen to North American Ice Hockey talkback and analysis. For anyone else it’s so boring but I can listen to it for hours,” he laughs. “Audiobooks can be interesting but sometimes you’ve got to concentrate too hard. But usually the mind just wanders, to all sorts of places, it’s quite good.”
He never races with his headphones, or even takes his phone, and just let’s his mind go.
“Where else in life do you have that time? Six or seven hours just to be. Meditative if you’re that way inclined.”
His race plan is unorthodox.
“I like to start at the back, simply so I can feel good working my way through the field and there’s lots of people to chat with along the way. So I’m a bit of a pest. If I started in the middle or near the front I’d probably drift back and people would be passing me and not wanting to stop for a chat.
“I’ve met some great friends through this system. Or victims,” he grins.
But for the ‘Good Sorts guy’ that creates its own issues.
He ran into some previous ‘victims’ during the Tarawera Ultra, at about the 35k mark.
“I walked/ran with them for about 30k and was feeling really good so then had the moral dilemma of do I stay with them for the rest of the race having laughs and giggles or do I keep running?”
Momentum made the decision for him on a downhill section where his longer strides took him away from his chat group and he just kept going.
“I thought running a bit slower for longer sounded more painful than if I busted out.”
Who knew there was room for etiquette and moral dilemmas during survival?
Hadyn says his highlight of the whole 102kms was seeing his family at the 70k mark.
“My 13 year-old son showed up in flip flops and socks, cos that’s what they do.
He had walked a couple of k up the road past the road block, to see me, and so we ran down together where the girls were waiting, that was really cool.
“Also the aid station at the 95k mark is set amongst the redwoods and they had the place done up like a disco and I realised I could finish, so that was another great moment.”
His 11 year-old put new socks and shoes on him at 85k. “It was like putting slippers on, it was so nice. The roads are almost gravel and the rocks stick out so your heels get really sore.”
The toughest parts were along the gravel forestry roads amongst all the felled trees.
“It was kind of like a desert, stinking hot and all you can smell is dead wallabies that had been run over.”
He didn’t get any blisters or bleeding nipples — just a couple of sore feet— and dined on heavily salted boiled potatoes he took with him, electrolytes and gels. He topped up with chips, lollies and flat coke at the aid stations — “they’re like a 12 year-old’s birthday party.”
But even eating became a mission.
“You get so tired. You know there’s food in your bag but can’t be bothered taking the bag off your back to get it.” Then of course the tummy starts objecting to everything you put in it.
All through the race he’d been dreaming of the nice cold beer he could look forward to once he’d finished. But in the end it was just a lemonade and a cold burger and then he went to bed.
Every time he rolled over in his sleep his body hurt.
So why does he do it?
“It is a mid-life crisis, it’s like a cry for help,” he self-deprecates. “My window for doing these sorts of things is sadly closing, so I may as well get stuck into it.
“Just the feeling of your body disintegrating but you’ve just got to keep trucking on. It’s a great battle within yourself to keep going.”
Afterwards “you kind of get on this runner’s high, which I’m still on (five days after the event).
You feel amazing for about a week, where your heart’s full of joy, the world’s great and life is beautiful, even though your body’s a bit sore.”
Plus there’s the whole thing of being a role model to his kids.
“My son said to me when there was about a k to go in this last one, ‘Dad I might do this when I’m old like you.’ I guess there’s a compliment in there somewhere!”