ABOUT

My name is Shaun Collins.  In the olden days when I was a fit young fella with heaps of time for training and racing I was known as Runningbeast – someone who trained hard and ate hills and rough terrain for breakfast!  As life progressed, the Runningbeast was locked away during a period of a new family, work and organising events.  Every now and then Runningbeast would get out from its cage and do something wild, but this got harder as I got busier and more family/events/work kicked it back away.

However the will is strong and now….the Runningbeast is released again!

In May 2017 I started training again properly with one goal in mind.  I achieved that goal In November 2017 becoming the first to complete a “Trillary”, which involved running the mostly technical trails of the Hillary Trail 3 times non-stop – a total of 226km and over 10,000m vertical ascent, which ended up taking over 49 hours. This mission competed my trifecta of being first to run a single Hillary, a double and the triple Hillary.

With some fitness back and the fire burning it was time to get back into some races and missions!

 

Over the last year as detailed in my Achievements & Plans page  I have done personal challenges and completed numerous races including:

  • UTA100km in the Blue mountains Sydney.
  • Blue Lake 24hr Challenge (complete as many laps of Blue Lake, Rotorua as possible in 24 hours – I was fastest to 29 laps (100miles) in just under 20 hours.
  • WUU2K 62 trail event in Wellington.
  • A 120km figure 8 of the central plateau mountains starting clockwise with a Northern Circuit (around Ngarahoe and Tongariro) and then anitclockwise around Ruapehu in 24 hours. I think this was a first.
  • The Revenant –  involves running 4 laps of about 45km each and a total of 16km vertical climb.  There isn’t a marked trail to follow, you have to navigate to a series of checkpoints. 
  • Ran to and up all 57 volcanos in Auckland in one go,  200 km in 33 hours.  This was a first.
  • Organised and competed in NZ’s first :Last person standing format event – The Riverhead Backyard ReLaps Ultra – Complete one 6.7km lap within an hour, restart again on the hour….continue…until only one person is left to complete a lap.  I was 3rd last year having to pull out at 27 laps (it was won in 29 laps) with a partial tear in my achilles.

 

This sets me up nicely for bigger adventures in 2020!  See the plans I have in my Achievements & Plans page

 

I consider myself an ultra trail runner who lives for adventure and the personal challenge.

I live at the southern end of the Waitakere Ranges in West Auckland, New Zealand.  Married to the wonderful Madeleine, with 3 teenage or nearly teenage daughters, I manage to balance training and completing ultra distance trail runs with a professional commercial/finance manager job, owning and managing a successful sports events Lactic Turkey Events, helping managing a corporate team building company that my wife runs, and some professional photography.

 

 

About Lactic Turkey Events

Lactic Turkey Events Ltd is a small company run by Shaun Collins (and a bunch of great helpers!) who is an competitor in adventure and multisport races, rogaines, mountain runs, and many other adventure off-road type events.  Lactic Turkey Events has been running events for nearly 20 years.

Lactic Turkey Events organises events throughout the year with the aim of getting people into the outdoors, having a go at something that will challenge them physically and, for some events mentally, as well. We aim for people to finish an event smiling and proud of their efforts.

Operating by the value “Professionalism in Jandels” Lactic Turkey events are professionally run but come across as low key, open to all levels, social, most times a bit quirky and have a great atmosphere.