How emergency doctor Inia Raumati beat racism: 'I just keep going'

Inia Raumati has been on the move his whole life.

By the time he was 18, he'd lived in 13 different towns and been to four schools. In his teenage years he started running as a way to cope with frustration and anger, an escape from bullying and racism.

Aged 40, having discovered ultramarathons, he ran races across four deserts in 12 months, traversing the vast and varied landscapes of the Sahara, Gobi, Atacama and Antarctica. It was a feat no other New Zealander had achieved.

Ten years later, he's going even further - attempting to run eight self-supported ultramarathons on every continent around the world this year. No one in the world has done that, he says.

In addition, as if all that isn't enough, Raumati is a doctor at Auckland Hospital, has previously served in Iraq as an Army Reserve, and is preparing to get married.

Also, he and his fiance, Vicki, have started a scholarship to encourage kids to find and reach their potential.

It's like Raumati doesn't know how to stop, his life a blur of night shifts, long-haul flights, and worn-out running shoes.

Yet in all that rushing around, even when he's been on his feet all day long - trudging up and down hills along trails, through jungles, or across deserts - he finds his peace.

"I enjoy it," he says. "Because my job is quite stressful I like to switch off, think about things in my life.

"I just keep going because it's what I like doing. To a certain extent your mind gets hardened over the years, and your mind figures out, 'Hey, we can do it', and just tells your body to shut up when it's complaining about things.

"I hate to say mental toughness - I think it's more an awareness that you can do something. Your body can do more than what you think it can."

As he undertakes this year of eight ultramarathons, he's encountering plenty of situations where his body must indeed be questioning whether what's being asked of it is in fact possible.

Earlier this year, running in the Namib Desert, Namibia, the temperature hit 57 degC, a roaring test for Raumati not long after he'd recovered from Covid. All day long, the sun beat down, and the finish line never seemed to get any closer.

At one point, he felt a burning pain in his foot, then fluid started coming up through his shoe. A blister had popped, but with no shade to stop and deal with it, he just had to keep going.

At another race, in Romania in August, he rounded a corner in the middle of nowhere and was confronted by eight snarling, barking livestock dogs. As they encircled him, Raumati got ready to defend himself with his running poles and spray he was carrying to deter bears.

The pack finally backed off when the shepherd whose dogs they were ran their way waving an axe and pushed himself in front of Raumati.

He tells this hair-raising story calmly, like it's nothing out of the ordinary. In actual fact, it's just another example of how Raumati always seems to find a way out of any situation; a constant exemplar of problem-solving, level-headedness, determination and resilience.

Raumati knows how to push on when others would walk away, to give it another go rather than give up.

It's not only how he runs his races - it's how he became a doctor.

'Just stay out of jail': Beating the barriers of racism

Raumati's father, Tikituterangi Raumati, was an archdeacon in the Anglican Māori Mission, which explains why moving was a way of life for the whānau. Taranaki was home, but the call of the church sent them all around the North Island.

Inia, one of four children to Tikituterangi and Wilma, was born in Ōpotiki, but Urenui in Taranaki will always be home. His iwi affiliations are Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Atiawa, and Ngāti Kahungunu.

From an early age, Raumati went to boarding schools, where, as he puts it, "I had good times and bad times … I got into running to deal with it".

One of the schools he went to, he says, he won't ever go back to, such is the way he feels about his time there as one of the few Māori students.

"I'd get sent racist hate mail through the internal school mail system, and nothing would happen," he says.

"Kids would do stuff all the time and never get punished. I'd be in a fight against five others because of something that had happened - and I'd be the one who'd get in trouble. The teachers would ask me: 'Why didn't you walk away?'"

In his final year at school, he was called to an exit interview in the headmaster's office. "He was sitting in his big office, behind his big desk and he asked what I was thinking about doing," says Raumati. With professional rugby in its infancy, Raumati said he was thinking about a sports career.

The response from the headmaster floored him: "Just stay out of jail."

"I'd basically been written off … no one in that system believed in me. I was fortunate that I had a very supportive family."

Initially, Raumati went to Otago University to study physiotherapy, not knowing his grades were good enough to apply for medicine - his teachers hadn't told him. He realises now that he "wasted a few years but knuckled down towards the end" and graduated.

By then, though, it had dawned on him that physiotherapy wasn't what he wanted to be doing.

While he figured out what he did want, Raumati joined the Territorials, partly to earn some money, and partly because military service was in the family history, including his father and one of his grandfathers. (In 2016, Raumati re-enlisted in the Territorials and served as an army doctor on deployment in Iraq).

As he mulled over his career options with his father, Raumati mentioned he was interested in becoming a doctor - during hospital placements at physio school he'd seen the medical students and thought: "I can do that".

His father was suddenly very encouraging - several of the first Māori doctors in Aotearoa traced back to Urenui and Ngāti Mutunga: Sir Māui Pōmare and Te Rangihīroa (Sir Peter Buck).

But getting into medical school would be an endurance test of its own.

He was rejected three times - even after getting a straight-A average in a pre-medicine year - and was about to give up.

Then another prominent Taranaki doctor, Dr Tony Ruakere - a foundation member of Te Ora, the Māori Medical Practitioners Association - heard about Raumati's situation, encouraged him to keep going, and then made some calls.

"Next thing, a week before university was about to start, I got a letter saying a spot had come up," says Raumati.

After graduating from Auckland University, Raumati spent stints at hospitals around the North Island and Australia. He's now at Auckland City, working in the emergency department, one of the few Māori in that field.

A running connection between father and son

In his 30s, after a few years working, Raumati rediscovered running, initially to help recover from a back injury. As a bonus, he also unexpectedly discovered it was a way to reconnect with his dad, who had since retired.

"When we were growing up, Dad was very busy with the Anglican Māori Mission so through no fault of his own we didn't see him a lot," says Raumati.

"When I got back into running, he really liked to come along."

By that stage, Raumati was running ultramarathons, such as the Tarawera 102km race based in Rotorua and renowned amongst runners for its generous "aid stations" - temporary stops to stock up with food and water during a long day of running.

"Dad came along as my support crew, but he was useless. He'd show up at races and help himself to food off the aid station tables. But people loved having him around."

At another race, Raumati had arranged some transport to help his father get around the course to support. At the first aid station he noticed his father hadn't used the pre-arranged transport, so asked how he'd got there.

"And he introduced me to these two young Māori girls and said, 'Oh, these are cousins of ours'. He'd just met them and then they drove him from aid station to aid station all day. That's how he was.

"It was great - he was my bad support crew for years."

Tikituterangi Raumati died aged 81 in 2018, and was given the rare honour of being buried on the grounds of the Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary. Inia's mum, Wilma, now in her 80s, still lives on the family farm at Urenui in North Taranaki.

In search of a limit

Raumati credits his upbringing and his whakapapa for his determination to stick around, even when things get tough.

"I think it's the way our family is. When things come up, rather than run away from it, I find the best way to deal with things is to tackle them head on," says Raumati. "Rather than ignore things or let things slide, it's better to take them head on."

But it's not like he sits around waiting for things to happen, living a life of comfort and free of challenge.

"I want to see what my limit is. I'd actually be most happy if I did any event at some stage and completely fell apart and didn't finish. Ultramarathon running gets close at times but I haven't failed yet - touch wood."

This year is perhaps the year he might get his wish.

The task he's set himself - running eight ultramarathons on eight continents - is proving even more difficult than he thought. Not because of the running - it's the travel.

Starting the year off with a race in Queenstown, his other events are in Namibia, Peru, Mongolia, Romania, the United States, Australia, and, finally, in December, Antarctica.

Most of the races are about 250 km, run over multi-day "stages". Each of them are self-supported - he has to carry everything he needs for the duration of the race, except for water.

In between races, he's back home working shifts at the hospital and trying to squeeze in training.

"The travel is draining and I don't have a lot of time to train in between it. A lot of it revolves around trying to put weight back on and recover because you lose muscle and strength."

At the start of the year he weighed 87kg, but at the end of the Mongolian race he was down to 75kg so embarked on an eating marathon to put weight back on before his next event.

"Your body is burning up its resources for fuel.

"At the start of the year I had an unlucky run with sickness, too, probably because of the travel itself and moving through airports, coming into contact with people," says Raumati.

Driving him on is the foundation he and fiance Vicki have formed, "Kia Mau, Kia Ora".

"The whole idea of the scholarship was to take what I've learned through my life and what ultramarathon running has taught me about perceived limits and that you can actually achieve more than you know," he says.

The foundation will seek senior school students to train and support them to run a multi-stage, self-supported race as part of a team, as well as helping them into their chosen careers.

"We're aiming for teenagers who aren't the high-achievers … it's those who are going to struggle unless someone puts some effort into them.

"We're not just going to chuck them in the deep end - we want to show them that there's somebody who's prepared to put some time into them over a year-long journey leading to an event that will hopefully be life-changing."

They've already had approaches from schools keen to help them find suitable candidates and people from the trail and ultra-running community have offered money and other types of support, "people who are prepared to offer time and expertise and even mentor people into careers".

Raumati knows that, were it not for his family, he could easily have drifted through life and not gone on to achieve what he has. He wants to help other kids avoid that too.

"We're going to hopefully try to get them to learn more about themselves and learn that they can actually achieve a lot more than what they've been told."