SwimRun Breca - Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Updated September 2024

NOTE: Breca has gone into liquidation (ie they have gone broke) and therefore all events have been cancelled.

The Breca brand name was taken over by swimrunner Jonathon Littlewood in 2023, but he has announced that he will NOT be taking the venture any further.

Check our Breca Swimrun page.

Here is our report about Breca BEFORE the bad news! We explain the events they used to run.

We entered the Swimun Breca - Bay of Islands (New Zealand) event. As new entrants to the world of Swimrun, we want to try different events around the world. We had only done 3 events beforehand, in Croatia, Switzerland and Italy. We wanted to branch out to New Zealand.

We wanted to attend some of the events at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Australia, in April 2018; Mogsy has relatives in New Zealand, and so it seemed the ideal opportunity to sign up for a swimrun race while we are "Down Under".

There were two swimrun events organized in New Zealand by Breca. One was in the South Island, (Breca Wanaka), and looked to be very tough, with cold waters and steep runs.

There was 42km of running (equivalent to a full marathon), with a total of 8km of swimming. That made 50km overall - a tough challenge! The Breca Swimrun Wanaka took place in March each year.

By contrast, the Swimrun Breca event in the Bay of Islands (about 3 hours by car North from Auckland) in the North Island, looked to be a better match for our ability and experience. It was staged in April. The water is warmer, and the runs were not quite so challenging. And there is the awesome beauty of the Bay of Islands to experience during the race! One important qualification to this - one of the swim legs was a straight 3km. That's just ONE of the swims, and it occurs in the first half of the race.

Here's the official video of the Bay of Islands event;

The Garmin Swim 2 is an excellent watch for Swimrun!

Check it out at Amazon HERE!

Garmin Swim 2 GPS Watch

Swimrun Breca - Bay of Islands, New Zealand

The distance was about 33 km, made up of 25km of running and 8.4km of swimming, and as I've just mentioned, included one swim of a straight 3km (almost 2 miles), so competitors definitely had to get some serious training in before heading off!

There were finisher's T-shirts and finisher's medals, so there was SOME recognition for spending 6 hours running and swimming. (Unlike Ötillö races!).

Of course, more experienced and younger teams completed the course in much less time; as newcomers to the sport, and with a combined age of over 110 years (cough), we would always expect to be following the main body of competitors, but we seem to be able to get ourselves ahead of the final cut-off times!

(Unfortunately, although we made the trip to New Zealand and Australia in 2018, we could not take part in the Bay of Islands event that year, due to a lack of training after Mogsy slipped a disc in her spine.)

Getting there; the nearest international airport is Auckland. Then you need to hire a car and drive 3 hours north to the Bay of Islands. Best town to stay in is Pahia. There is a lot of accommodation available in the area through AirBnB.