Editor’s note: At the end of March, Grave Runners became the first dedicated New Zealand crew to complete The Speed Project. We had caught up with them back in February as they were planning their attack, so of course we couldn’t wait to hear how it all went.

The crew of six runners couldn’t have covered the 550 kilometres of gruelling desert terrain and hills without exceptional footwear. Fortunately, they had New Balance’s support – quite literally – as they fanged it towards Las Vegas. During their training stint and the event itself, the team had a wide rotation to choose from: the Fresh Foam X 1080 v14, the FuelCell Rebel v4, the FuelCell SC Elite Trainer v3, the FuelCell SC Elite v4 and the trail-running Fresh Foam X Hierro. After such an intensive road test, we wanted to know which shoes the crew would pull on across a range of different challenges.

Josh Harre was running alone through a small American desert town when things got hairy.

“You’re getting chased by dogs and it literally gets to the point where the dogs are so loud that you cannot hear your footsteps,” Josh recalls. “You turn around – three of them chasing you. Then you’re on the ground yelling at these dogs and kicking at them to get them away from you.”

Moments before, Josh had called Grave Runners co-founder Connor Adams for help. But as Connor describes the SOS, “Josh called and I could hear all the dogs barking – and then the phone cut out.”

Connor and fellow Grave Runner Nick Phipps were in the support Jeep, which wasn’t quite where it was supposed to be. “We were a little bit late to follow on from Josh,” Nick explains. “So he was left running a K or two in probably the sketchiest segment where we should have been with him. We had taken a wrong turn, so we flipped a massive U-turn to chase after him. He’s kind of panicking, the dogs are barking – and then his phone goes dead.”

When the team finally located Josh, he had fallen on the gravelly surface, his phone had disconnected, and he was sheltering behind a car as the dogs continued to snap and snarl. But he took it all in his stride, Nick says. “Poor Josh, bless his soul, didn’t even flinch. After that, he just carried on and we drove next to him in silence for about a K. But it was pretty scary.”

It was just one of countless unpredictable moments during the Kiwi crew’s first attempt at The Speed Project, the infamous ultra-relay race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Almost two months after our first article about Grave Runners, the scattered crew of six runners from Auckland, Melbourne and New York came together to make history as the first dedicated New Zealand team to complete TSP. They reached the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign (the official finish line) 51 hours and 30 minutes after setting out from Santa Monica Pier in the pre-dawn darkness of a Friday morning in late March.

4am Energy

The start line at Santa Monica Pier presented its own unique challenges. The team – six runners and five support crew had assembled in LA a couple of days prior after dealing with pre-race challenges that included a cancelled flight, a cancelled Jeep booking and being “catfished” on Airbnb with bogus accommodation. All of them were opportunities to build pre-race resilience, Connor wryly notes. Coming to early Friday, the team had gotten just a few hours of sleep after a chaotic day of preparation; Connor admits they were all “tired but wired” as they arrived well before the designated 4am start time.

Though they were perhaps a little frazzled, by this time they’d already received nationwide recognition back in New Zealand, after being featured on the evening news. “It was always really important for us to feel like we were bringing Aotearoa with us, so to get on the national news was huge,” Connor says. “With The Speed Project being an unofficial, elusive thing – and people in New Zealand not having seen a crew do it before – we got so many messages after that. It felt like an army of people were really invested and keen to see more. So that was dope.”

Josh, selected to run the first leg, was also knocked out by the energy at the start line. “No matter how many running events you’ve been to, you’ve never seen anything quite like that,” he says. “I’m someone that can get pretty excited and jacked up pretty easily. So honestly, I was standing at the start line with my eyes closed trying to calm myself down.”

Fortunately, before heading to the start line, the team had participated in some grounding breathwork led by Ursula Griffen, one of their support crew. “We all held hands and shared desires and what we thought would be a successful TSP for us as individuals,” Connor says. “That was really invaluable, because if we didn’t have somebody like Ursula, we may have just stayed in that chaotic frame of mind that we’d been in getting to the start line.”

And then Josh (SC Trainers on foot for the faster paved segments) and around 1,000 other runners headed from the pier towards the Hollywood Hills in the distance. As they set off, Lorna Denholm, normally based in New York but connected to the team’s Auckland roots, had a moment of clarity. “I remember just sitting there in the RV being like, ‘Okay, this is me for the next two days.’ This is the thing that I’ve been thinking about for months.”

Into the Desert

The crew entered the race with varying levels of fitness and injuries. The harsh New York winter had hampered Lorna’s ability to train consistently, with a lot of her speed sessions forced onto the treadmill. “There were weeks where the track was just way too icy and, even if you had the right gear, it’s not worth risking a broken ankle,” she says.

In Auckland, Samantha Nicole was recovering from illness just before the race: “I was pretty good up until two to three weeks before. And then the wheels kind of fell off and I got quite sick. Then, because I got sick, all my injuries started creeping up on me as well.”

Over the ditch in Melbourne with Connor and Nick, Annabelle Raimes was able to put her prior triathlon training to work when tendonitis flared up during her preparation. “I had a bit of a tweak when I was out on a trail run,” she says, “but because I come from a triathlon kind of background, my physio was like, ‘bike heaps, swim, keep your cardio fitness up.’

“When I’m told to do something, I go hard. I just wanted to get back to running as quick as possible. So I went really hard on my rehab – it paid off and I didn’t have any issues during the race.”

Connor and Nick both reported solid, injury-free training blocks – though juggling 100km weeks with a busy work life is never going to be easy. “I absolutely loved the Rebels during training in the lead up to TSP,” Connor says. “They resembled a barefoot style feel to me while still being supportive enough to go the distance. I enjoyed them so much that I got another pair for TSP!” At the top end of the team’s fitness spectrum, Josh completed a training intensive designed to simulate TSP conditions, running “4 by 4 by 48” – giving up solid sleep for a couple of days to run four miles (6.4km) every four hours for 48 hours.

For some of the team, the most challenging aspect of TSP wasn’t the running itself but everything that happened between segments. Despite extensive planning, the reality of coordinating six runners plus five support crew across 550 kilometres of desert brought inevitable complications. “You get to the point where the running is the easy bit,” Josh reckons. “It’s all the bits in between that are the actual challenge. Where do people sleep? When do you eat?” He remembers an RV dilemma when one team member was trying to get some much-needed sleep but another exhausted runner badly needed to use the noisy massage gun.

These logistics became even more complex as the race progressed. Sam got injured fairly early on. “I twisted my knee coming down off this little ramp that ended up being this crazy busy highway,” she explains. “Because it was only my second run, I was just so gutted that it was going so wrong. I got back to the RV and I lost it, basically.”

After this section Sam switched to the extra protection of the Hierro. “One of New Balance’s trail shoes, the Hierro, became my true hero,” Sam says. “I put mine on from then on out and didn’t swap back to the 1080s until we were on solid pavement in Vegas. The lugs on the Hierros saved my ankles out there more times than I can count.”

Adjusting to Sam’s injury, the female half of the crew switched from running 10K segments to changing over every five kilometres. The boys kept their 10K segments, and the way the Grave Runners organised it was for the three guys to run in sequence followed by the three women.

“Because we changed the plan to 5K, 5K, 5K, all three of us girls had to be in the Jeep for the entire 30K,” Sam explains. The shorter changeovers, combined with the male runners’ naturally faster paces, meant the female crew would get less rest and recovery than the guys. “We just got less downtime,” Sam says.

Bonds Forged in the Desert

Temperature extremes presented one of the most significant physical challenges. Death Valley lived up to its fearsome reputation, even though the actual readings were lower than in other years. They ranged from lows of 3° Celsius overnight to highs of 27° – but in the desert, where there’s precious little breeze and no shade, 27 degrees feels like 40.

Despite the physical hardships – or perhaps because of them – the team forged deep connections that many highlighted as the most valuable aspect of the experience. For Lorna, this surprised her. “I’ve never really done team sports outside of school, so I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that kind of connection to people,” she says.

“That’s the thing that I try to tell people about. They’re like, ‘How was the race and how many miles did you run?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah cool, but the connection I had with my team,’” she says with a self-aware laugh. “Not that this was unexpected, but I think the level of respect and communication and love between us was even stronger than I expected.”

The team’s most challenging moments often revealed these bonds most clearly. During one night segment when Lorna was struggling with persistent nausea that had plagued her throughout the race, she found unexpected support.

“I’d gotten pretty sick throughout most of the race. It got to the point where I couldn’t really keep any food down,” Lorna explains. At one point, she says, “I had to stop and throw up on the side of the road and was just straight up having a terrible time. Eventually I got to the RV, saw Connor and Josh, burst into tears and then threw up again in front of the truck.”

Later, during a night segment, she remembers the team’s photographer and videographer, Kayle Lawson, who’s not even a huge runner, offered to do her 5km section with her. “I think he’d maybe picked up that I wasn’t feeling okay even though I’d told everyone else I was. We did that segment together and it was in complete silence, which was funny because both of us love to talk all the time.”

The moment crystallised for her when she saw Josh running toward her in the distance. “That was one of my happiest moments,” she says. “Josh had no idea that I’d been struggling this whole time. It was just a really nice example of our team pulling together in so many different ways.”

Josh reflects on the crucible-like nature of the experience: “You get to the point at the end of a couple of days where you’re like, ‘All that is here is who I actually am and what I have to offer to this team.’”

Beauty and Absurdity

Between the exhaustion and the exertion came moments of surreal beauty. One such scene involved dancing horses that appeared as they were driving through a small town after the infamous “dog town” section. “It was the most beautiful sunset, and there were these two cowboys on dancing horses,” Annabelle recalls. “And we were like, ‘What is going on?’ When you’re a bit delusional and you’ve been running heaps and you just see something like that, you are just like, what?” Another surreal discovery was a small desert rave TSP had organised near Amazon’s distribution center, a sprawling mass of warehouses. “It’s in the middle of the desert,” Josh explains. “It’s literally like a tent, a DJ booth, and it’s like a few people dancing around a Joshua tree.”

Each of the crew mentions how spectacular the scenery is across The Speed Project. Sometimes, of course, things lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous, and Lorna has a story to tell.

“There was the beautiful sunrise in the most beautiful location we’d ever seen,” she says. “All of us were in the Jeep just in awe of this thing. And then we hear Annabelle screaming as she comes over the hill because she desperately needs the bathroom, poor girl. It was the weirdest change of vibe that I’ve ever experienced!”

The Final Push

After almost two full days of running, the moment the team crested the final hill and saw Las Vegas on the horizon provided a much-needed boost. “There’s that moment when you see the glow of Vegas – I think it just really lit us all up and we definitely used it as a bit of fuel,” Connor recalls. “Starting in Santa Monica and it just feeling so far away at the time, to realise the end is in sight – it was definitely a thrill.” That final run was a memorable highlight for Annabelle too. “My last run when we were coming down to Vegas, was the first time that I’d had the tap on from Connor and he was like, ‘Fucking send it home.’ It honestly gave me so much fire in my belly I just went down this hill at a 4:07 pace, which is fast for me.” For this job, she knew she needed the carbon-plated SC Elites. “My last few segments were my fastest, surprisingly, and it felt amazing flying down into Vegas in the Elites.”

Reaching the famous Las Vegas welcome sign around 7:30 am presented its own comedic challenges. Keep in mind that a team’s official time is clocked when they manage to post a photo of themselves touching the sign to the TSP-wide WhatsApp group. “At the Vegas sign, there was a line of tourists all getting photos, and all the runners just barged through because we don’t know what’s going on,” Nick recalls. “And there’s another crew there trying to get their photo and two tourists ended up getting sprayed with champagne. They just let off swearing at this crew, and there was a TSP guy trying to manage these angry tourists while trying to let these run crews come flying through and get a finishing photo.”

After the Dust Settles

The team completed the journey in 51 hours and 30 minutes – slightly longer than their goal of 48–50 hours, but an achievement they’re universally proud of. When asked what they would do differently, most pointed to minor logistical improvements rather than training or team selection. “From a strategic point of view, if we wanted to be faster, we should have nailed our changeovers,” Lorna notes. “Sometimes we would just really take our time changing over. I think not realising that if you have 60 segments, one minute between each changeover, that’s an extra hour right there.” Sam suggested altering their approach to segment distances: “I’d go shorter segments for everyone right from the start. I don’t know how we landed on 10K ... I was talking to other teams who were like, ‘We’re doing one mile at a time’ or ‘We’re doing three runners on this rotation for the next hour.’”

But when asked what they would keep exactly the same, the answer was unanimous: the team itself. “The crew. I think we got a really awesome mix of not only skill or technical ability that was valuable to the team but also just personality in general that really gelled in that environment,” Josh says. He particularly praised their support crew: “Billy [Sheldon] ended up writing our whole race plan in terms of the structure of segments and putting it in a format that was super easy to use.” He’d even gone as far as instructing every crew member to rehearse each of their segments with a run-through using Google Maps’ street view function.

“Georgia [Fazekas] as well,” Josh continues. “She joined relatively late in the piece but has a long history of working on luxury yachts, so she has a very unique experience of working in confined environments, with people who know each other but maybe not too well, knowing what they need to keep going – just an absolute godsend.”

Meanwhile, Ursula kept the team grounded, well and focused. For his part, Kayle shot 5,000 photos and three hours of video footage, most of which is still to be selected, edited and published – a mini documentary is a possibility and the crew are joining with Tempo to host a photo exhibition at our new Melbourne gallery later this year. Ashleigh Pierce from Coffee Supreme took great care making sure the team were well fed and caffeinated. An all-round weapon, Ash also drove the support vehicle and, supporting Kayle’s efforts, took the lead on capturing all the photos that were shared in real time on Tempo’s IG channel as TSP unfolded. For many team members, the experience either changed or consolidated how they view themselves and their capabilities. Josh discovered he’s particularly good at working with whatever’s thrown at him: “Things can go off plan, things can go awry, and I feel like I’m still able to give my best in those environments.”

Life Beyond TSP

As for what’s next, several team members have expressed interest in future TSP events, especially now the event has gone global by adding new locations such as the Chamonix–Marseille route in France and across the high-altitude Atacama desert in Chile. But for now, they’re still processing what they accomplished together. “Normal life kind of sucks,” Lorna admits, having returned to her corporate job in Times Square. “I sit in my little cubicle and make my little spreadsheets and I just keep thinking about my experience. When will I stop talking about it? I don’t know. Eventually, but not yet.”

Sam and Annabelle took a different approach to re-entry, extending their American adventure with a road trip through national parks in California, Utah and Arizona. When we catch up with them on a video call, they’re sipping Modelo beers in another rented RV, with spotty mobile reception, about to head to a pub to meet Georgia for dinner. “We haven’t hit normal yet,” Sam attests. “We dropped the old RV back to LA a couple of days after the race. And then we picked up this one that we’re now sitting in and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

“We are road tripping through all the national parks in California and Arizona currently. I’ve been for a few runs, but we are mostly hiking every day. The Hierros that were so good during TSP are carrying me through here too,” she says. “I think the reality of real life is gonna be pretty tough when we get back.” For a team that came together from across the globe to blaze a trail for New Zealand in the desert, the memories they made will last far longer than the 51 hours it took to get from Santa Monica to Las Vegas. As Josh aptly puts it, “I think about the fact that I met Connor because we were living next to each other in an apartment building during Covid. I’d go for a run, come back, see him going for a run, and you do this classic guy thing of giving a nod to acknowledge the other guy’s going out. And now it’s escalated to this thing where we’re running 550km through the desert.”

In other words, things have come a long way from a crew founded in 2020 with the simple goal of getting a small group of self-proclaimed Auckland dirtbags off the couch. And the journey is far from over. As The Speed Project’s tagline says, “It was better next year.”