2014 Beast of Ballyhoura - Ireland's longest AR

nerraw1111

Great experience. Nothing prepares you to be flying down a hill on a mountain bike in the middle of the night, with 25 hours of racing behind you, and hallucinating all sorts of wonderful things.

Or standing at a lake shore in the dark, trying to psyche yourself up to swim towards a flashing light in the distance.

The race is just so full on. We were so close to nailing the course but alas a few navigational mistakes and inexperience, cost us.

The positive is that we were still going strong 30 odd hours into the race and on another day, one mistake less, I think we would’ve been in the top 10. The errors we made I think are ones that are easily avoided with experience.

The sense of freedom and self-sufficiency is pretty liberating. The idea that you can go for 40 hours, hiking, kayaking, cycling, and still feel strong at the end of it. That you can stay out in the countryside for 2 days solid. That’s a pretty cool thought.

The hallucinations/sleep monsters I got were pretty amazing. Through a combination of tiredness, the head torch giving me tunnel vision, and the speed of the bike, I saw dancing robots, waltzing Roman statues and at one stage, cycled into a Roman square. Fully aware I was seeing things but I did indulge them before jolting out of them.

On one hand, I’m disappointed with the overall result but on the other, it was our first race, I think we surprised a lot of people, learnt shedloads and will probably win it next time

Excuseless

nerraw1111 wrote: »

Great experience. Nothing prepares you to be flying down a hill on a mountain bike in the middle of the night, with 25 hours of racing behind you, and hallucinating all sorts of wonderful things.

Or standing at a lake shore in the dark, trying to psyche yourself up to swim towards a flashing light in the distance.

The race is just so full on. We were so close to nailing the course but alas a few navigational mistakes and inexperience, cost us.

The positive is that we were still going strong 30 odd hours into the race and on another day, one mistake less, I think we would’ve been in the top 10. The errors we made I think are ones that are easily avoided with experience.

The sense of freedom and self-sufficiency is pretty liberating. The idea that you can go for 40 hours, hiking, kayaking, cycling, and still feel strong at the end of it. That you can stay out in the countryside for 2 days solid. That’s a pretty cool thought.

The hallucinations/sleep monsters I got were pretty amazing. Through a combination of tiredness, the head torch giving me tunnel vision, and the speed of the bike, I saw dancing robots, waltzing Roman statues and at one stage, cycled into a Roman square. Fully aware I was seeing things but I did indulge them before jolting out of them.

On one hand, I’m disappointed with the overall result but on the other, it was our first race, I think we surprised a lot of people, learnt shedloads and will probably win it next time

Ye can take lots of positives from the race and for a "First Time Out" it was a great effort and almost great result for ye.

As Enduro has said, the M2 mess-up seems so inexcusable in retrospect but sometimes it takes a bit of luck too when up in the mist on a fairly featureless mountain top but whatever way these races go you just have to take the hits and get on with it in the hope that others will make mistakes also along the way and that will help get your team back in contention.

Our Outfront Events crew went from being up front with the Czechs and a few other teams approaching M2 to stone last with Get No Sleep and the Scandinavian ladies team when we eventually found it.
We elected to head for B6 at that stage to keep up progress in the hope that some of the later controls might prove easier to get in terms of time spent vs points worth.
It was a difficult assessment to make when we only knew of the location of the stage 1 foot O controls at that stage and those that went for it on stage 1 and found their controls ok were rewarded with good points in return for the effort expended.

I made another major unforced error early in the bike O stage when I had marked a bonus control in the wrong place and that really set us back a long way from where we might have hoped to be after the first 15 hours of racing.

Thankfully it was a 40 hour race and we kept the spirits and pace up for the rest of the race and were probably moving as well as any on the final long trek/ run in the Galtees on Sunday morning.

We were very pleasantly surprised/ shocked to have got back up to 3rd by the finsh

Lots learnt by all teams I would say and having 3 Irish teams in the first 4 behind the worthy Czech winners was a good result in general against some experienced foreign teams.

Basics of good navigation, tactical decisions on taking bonus controls, team work, nutrition and foot care were critical as is typical for these events.

Methinks realistically we will all need to improve to be in the reckoning for top 10 or better placings in 2015 against the likes of Adidas Terrex when the Beast is the European Championships race but will be good if we can have Tri Harder and all the other Irish teams back to "enjoy" what is scheduled to be a 72 hour race :eek:

The likes of yerselves and DAR Dingle probably have a lot more potential to improve than some of us auld dogs.

Another great job by Causeway and his organisation's team again

shotgunmcos

Excuseless wrote: »

The likes of yerselves and DAR Dingle probably have a lot more potential to improve that some of us auld dogs.

Yep

Well done on the claw back to a podium finish!