Beast of Ballyhoura

0430. Up coffee. Porridge. I slept in the clothes i was intending to race in. I looked out the door and saw people running around like headless chickens. Twas pretty funny. 0500 The race was ment to start. Nothing happened. Mayham. Eventually got the map and we were gone. The map was drawn in crayon with the tracks we were ment to use not mapped. O yeah, and either was the 30m high cliffs that all teams went for first!! We had a mistake here as we searched for a control on the stairs that didn exist. Lost a bit of time. The log crossing would have been funny photo. All four of us sitting cross legged on the log shuffling across a raging river. Donal the beast just went straight through the river. Its handy weighting an extra 50kg! After the O we were clocked out for an absail. I was bricking it. Ollie somehow talked me over the edge. I wanted to pull out but i had no choice at this stage. Eventually had my feet on the ground. Serious adrenline buzz. Then we entered the kayaking stage. I was in the kayak with Kev. 25km of hell. Twas grand at the beginning. Local knowleage by Ollie got us over a tricky section before a bridge as two teams got stuck. Then paddle paddle paddle. Finally reached Fermoy. Down the weir, into the trees paddle paddle paddle and then to the last section. Up stream. The start was ok. Not to difficult. Then things got horrible. Branches in river and a fast current. I can't really remember what happened on that i bailed out of the kayak as i was cramping. Then we had another section where kev and myself had to go Le Bonc to reach a branch. We hung on there for a min and then went flat out again but we weren going anywhere. We headed to the bank and bailed out. Portage time! I legged it back to give orla and ollie a hand out of the water as kev secured our boat. The portage was less than a km i reckon. We dumped the kayaks and got access to the boxes to get dry clothes and pick up the bikes. I picked up a second bag of food as i wasn't sure if i had enough (a move i was greatful for later). We biked to Kilworth and did an orienteering session. Twas uneventful as far as i can remember. There was one hell of a steep climb to a couple of the controls. Back on the bikes, collecting two controls going via the Kilworth ranges - tis good to have 3 military on the team - and on to a cross roads, dumped the bikes and did another O section. Again this was pretty uneventful, collected most of the controls, we almost had a nav error but Kev copped it before we lost time. Left out 3 controls before we headed back to the bikes On the rothar again for a long slog. Following the Avondu way for a fair bit. Ollie did most of the bike naving. I had a bit of trouble with my gears, used my water bottle to clean them. We were biking with 2 other teams. They got confused at a Xroads so we waited hoping they would make a mistake, we got fed up waiting and powered on. One team went with us, we didn't see the other team again. We reached the Crow Hill area and got a bit of off the clock time for an archery section. Ollie out shot the lot of us by a fair bit. This is where we lost the race to dan and meave - they out shoot us and got an extra 10 points which was the 10mins at the end of the day :(. But it was good fun and nice to shovel food into us. Mainly the bag of pasta. Onwards to the first of the hiking stages in Knockmealdowns. Kev took and nav as we got nearly every peak in that godforsaken place. I'm suprised there isn't a hill run up sugarloaf, twas very very steep! We decened in the dark to CP 17 aka the devils pot luck control. It was decribed as a river/track junction. The only slight difficulty with it was that the track wasn't on the map!!! So we headed on down the river. I kinda hit a wall at this stage and got demoralised. Ollie once again showed his guts to insist we carry on when it was a 3:1 motion strongly against. He crossed a small stream and said here it is. We didn believe him. But low and behold there it was. This was the turning point as if we had to decieded to evac we would have evaced in the wrond direction and we'd probably still be up there!! We contuined along the track and bumped into Trevor who was having alot of fun, we pointed him in the right direction :P we hit and river and followed it, at this point i went through my first hallucinations. I could see tracks everywhere! Eventually we found a ride going in our general direction. which brought us to where we wanted to go. Followed it down to the bikes as the clocks struck midnight....

Collected the bikes and headed in the direction of Mitchelstown caves. Along the way (after about 40mins of hard cycling) we bumped into a group of 8 racers on the main road, they were completely lost. Ollie showed them where they were, the look of happiness was like 10 christmas's and birthdays come at once. The didn care that they were the guts of 2hours away from the CP. They were just happy they knew where they were. Along this stretch of the road we got a puncture which the fast c02 pump failed to inflate. Collected the caves CP and then went into the maze. I found it and had trouble gettiong out. At this point we discoveryed kev's great love of all things gardening with his quote "Just walk through it for fuck sake". You probably had to be there. As we left Dav Weston and his gang pulled in. We contuined on the bikes picking up controls heading in the general direction of ballyhoura. We crossed a main road and a van came out of nowhere and almost killed ollie and orla. Luckly he missed and we contuined on our way. This section is a bit hazy. All i remember is drifting in and out of a drousy state. Only focusing on whoevers red bike light in front. Very weird but scary at the same time. We got to our kit boxes eventually - maybe 0430?! - changed our clothes, more food, coffee, used the jacks. Kev got offered coke by Ali G at this point, we kinda gate crashed a weird random drug fueled fancy dress party. Confusion about who was weirer happened on both sides. We got out big lamps and began the hike to the ballyhoura trails, ollie with the spare battery in case it ran out. Walking along the road Kev hit his wall and ollie talked him out of it. Climbing up hill to the first control i saw a team and called out hey guys! How ye running. I was ingored so i shouted louder.... i got a weird look from everyone else. The "team" turned out to be a bush.... These things happen when you don't sleep for a very long time! I raced down from the top of the hill after guzzling a litre of luco sport. We soildered onto the next control As we walked up the road i saw another team crossing a field. Again i was slagged saying there was no one there. Until they realised it was Meave. I think i acted like a spoilt little child that was right at this point. Again completely allowed. We hit the control after fighting up through a spikey field seeing 3 teams just in front of us... hit the control and i squeezed through some gorse and mud to see if the ride existed... M7 motorway! Ollie was going to lamp my bag over to me but i got him to stop just in time (massive hole of crap). I directed the guys over to a cleaner spot that got them around the mank and onto a straight line to ballyhoura, our route choice was beautiful if i do say so myself. Then the monent of the competition then occured. We were walking down the road to the trail head for the MTB and who ran by, it could only be the one man. Donal jogged past and he took it very well. (he only ripped the one building down with his bare hands!). Then when we reached the trail head but who did we see, none other than Meave and Dan who were horrified than we were still in the game and up there with them. Dan aged about 20 years in a split second when orla told him we had gotten all the check points. The reason for my delight as catching them was due to miss hearing what meave said to me the previous night. She commented that i was very young to do an adventure race. However what i heard was "Colm, your TOO young to do adventure racing". Of course i dislike been told i can't do something Mistakes happen. We were given the option of doing the Ballyhoura trails or take a 4:30hr penalty... we took the penalty and were out the door in under 1:30min with the bikO map. Orla floored it up the hill back the way we came. The three military teams went head to head. Ollie took charge and we rocked around. Orla beasting it up hill, kev doing a few crazy sprints and ollie running threw forest in clips! Heading for one control, i went "off pieste" (i thank niall for those crazy sessions on 3rock). Down the hill and i just threw everything into the climb up to the main road as Dan was only on the way down. We rocketed back to the trail head. Handed in the card, loaded up with water, used the jacks again and headed back up the road attempting to fight back the adrenline. We still had the guts of 30km to cycle till the finish line. We collected the next couple of markers and with no supirise Meaves Team flew past us. We kept at our own pace and bagged CP after CP. Ollie keeping us on check. We then found we had a control marked in the wrong spot (only one on the entire course). We spun back about 750m or so and picked it up. As we left - who showed up but Meaves team. A nav error made them lose time (again). We cycled in front of them until the last control. Dan reached the gate first and then we were both looking in the field. I saw the control on the far side of the river... what i should have done was said to Dan that they weren't out yet but i was too nice. I half asked ollie which of us would go into the river. I had half said it before i realised the si card was attached to me, bag off, into the cold waist deep river (i took a serious one for the team at this point). Punched the control and back across the river. Big dramatic roll below the fence and onto the bike. Dan was first through the gate, then me then ollie. In hindsight i should probably have been last out as i could have caught ollie on the climb. Mistakes happen. We horsed it up the hill to the main road, then into castletownroach and up that hill. The locals looked horrified as we gave chase. We entered the castle. Skidding to a hault almost killing a stuward as i lunged for the finish punch. We crossed the line less than one min behind Dan and Meave. Not to bad for a team that was out for the fun and with the objected to finish. In the ended with the time penalties in, it came as no suprise that Paul Mahons Team cruised around to win even after taking in the trails at Ballyhoura. Meave and Dan finished 2nd while our team consisting of Orla, Ollie, Kev and myself finshed a dam impressive 3rd in the "Elite Class". We were less than 30mins down on first and 10 down on 2nd. 4th was Donal and Cathriana.... No jokes about Donal DNF Burke allowed. We should send our congrads to him for finally finishing such a tough and challenging race. I want to race on his team after all next year... I'd say he'd monster me!! :D (for the uneducated - Donal is actually a complete animal. His usual training is mountain intervals before breakfast... its rumored that Wicklow once had sharp peaks like the Mournes but Donal went for a hike and the sheer number of times he summited every mountain from every direction gave Wicklow its flat roundish tops - ever notice how flat the summit of Lug is..... think about it!!) Snails kick ass!!! The military had teams finishing in 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Not 3 bad but Paul is still top dog on the Irish AR scene even if Donal took a notch at the Rogaine.