Welcome to Episode 33 of the Eat for Endurance Podcast, featuring elite adventure racer and Team New Zealand Captain, Nathan Fa’avae.
Nathan is a legend in the world of adventure racing. He has been a full-time or semi-professional athlete for 18 years, and he is still absolutely crushing it. He has accomplished many impressive athletic feats during this time, including captaining the New Zealand adventure racing team to six World Championship victories. His most recent win was at World’s Toughest Race - Eco Challenge Fiji, which my husband and I binged on Amazon Prime when it came out over the summer. If you haven’t watched the documentary yet and would like to, skip this episode until you’ve seen the show, as you will otherwise hear lots of spoilers!
Adventure racing, you could argue, is the epitome of endurance sport. Teams are racing for up to a week, engaging in multiple disciplines (trekking, paddling, mountain biking, climbing, white water rafting and more), and do not have much time to sleep or rest. Nutrition is always important to successful sports performance, but the sheer volume and logistics of nutrition in adventure racing puts fueling considerations on a completely different level.
I had SO many adventure racing questions after watching Eco Challenge Fiji, and was inspired to ask Nathan onto my show after listening to Tina Muir’s Running for Real podcast featuring him and his teammate Sophie (such a badass mother and athlete!). It was an awesome interview, but they didn’t talk about the team's nutrition, so obviously an Athlete Nutrition Profile was in order!
I’ve been enjoying longer, in-depth interviews this season, and this one is no exception. Nathan lives for adventure and the outdoors, and has such an inspiring story to tell. We explored his life and nutrition/athletic background, and he shared plenty of amazing stories and advice from his decades of experience in the sport as well as lots of not-seen-on-camera details from Eco Challenge Fiji.
I was craving an adventure as soon as we finished our interview! Also, I want to move to New Zealand. :)
THANK YOU Nathan for spending a couple hours with me! I can’t wait to see what Team New Zealand gets up to next.
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