ITERA 2016 - If you are easily strayed, look away now!!

sconhome

Edit: Fixed?

career move

Haha you starting the countdown already?

Link isn't working btw

sconhome

Planning my training and racing for the next while.

Next step is to orcestrate a split away from the T/D forum with a specific AR forum

Enduro

Well now we know it'll be the west coast for sure anyway! So many possibilities...

It's gonna be awesome

sconhome

West is BEST!!

Much better than Challenge Galway any day, month or year

pgibbo

Very interesting!!! I'd say that would be epic

career move

Enduro wrote: »

Well now we know it'll be the west coast for sure anyway! So many possibilities...

It's gonna be awesome

We may start out on the west coast but where will we go in between :eek: You'd cover a far bit of Ireland in 600k .....

Failte Ireland:

Ireland is small enough to be visited in its entirety within a couple of weeks 5 days, in which time you cannot see everything worthwhile of course - but you will gather an impression of something new, strange and beautiful in the make-up of land and people.

Ireland is an island of 84,288 sq km (32,544 square miles). Its greatest length is; 485 km (302 miles), its greatest width is 304 km ( 189 miles), and its coastline extends for over 5,631 km (3,500 miles).

sconhome

Malin to Mizen the hard way round

Excuseless

Will be great if it comes to fruition and hopefully it will and I will be there to participate too

Other attempts at expedition races in Ireland in late naughties unfortunately did not take off in terms initially with numbers (for GF12 in 2006 & 2007) and then financially due to several "factors" (Turas in 2008).

With the good participant base Causeway in particular has built up in the Beast of Ballyhoura and good overseas interest that Itera / World Series might bring it should go well but serious local funding from the likes of Failte Ire / Discover Ire will be vital methinks

shotgunmcos

Well fingers crossed. Cause it would be frickin awesome if it comes to fruition.

I for one am all in and time enough to get fit for it too ��

mossym

Excuseless wrote: »

With the good participant base Causeway in particular has built up in the Beast of Ballyhoura and good overseas interest that Itera / World Series might bring it should go well but serious local funding from the likes of Failte Ire / Discover Ire will be vital methinks

lot of excitement for the proposed xterra race in ireland this year as well, and it went nowhere despite officially announcements and being part of the xterra tour as well. after that i'd take any of these long term announcements with a serious pinch of salt. until the start line goes up you never know

anyway, this is two years away, should you lot not be planning next year first and leaving 2016 till this time next year? Surely there are loads of ways to get lost between now and then?

Enduro

Xterra and Iterra are two entirely different things.

The Iterra lads are now a very experienced bunch of race organisers who have already organised equivalent races in 3 different countries (England, Scotland, Wales). I would be very confident that this race is going to happen. They would seem to have already taken care of some of the groundwork.

There have been 3 full proper expedition length races in Ireland in the past. Brian Eliot's two Adrenalin Rush races and the Turas (Gael force 12 was too short to be called expedition length). The Adrenalin Rush races were pioneering races. They got plenty of entrants, and were excellent races.

The Turas was a great race with a disastrous post-race outcome. The course was absolutely fantastic. The organisation of the race itself was brilliant (even with one flaw in the flow of the race). As a race experience it was probably the best I have ever had in AR. It was easily the most competitive AR ever in Ireland with a huge number of world class teams taking part, drawn by the big prize money. Unfortunately the prizemoney never materialised, leaving a very bitter taste in the mouth for a lot of people, and turned what should have been a triumph into a disaster (I was on the 2nd placed team, so that could have been my largest race winnings ever by a big margin. I was lucky though, in that being a local it hadn't cost me much beyond holidays to take part). I'd be 100% confident that Iterra will not make any of the mistakes that the Turas did.

I'd guess that the Irish Iterra will attract a large number of british teams. Hopefully the rareness of full length expedition races in Ireland will attract a few international teams as well. And most importantly, hopefully there will be plenty of local teams taking the rare opportunity to do a full actual adventure race.

mossym

not questioning the organisation itself, more that big brand races don't seem to pan out here. xterra was one. then challenge. look at the scepticism in the IM dublin thread and a steady trend is emerging. I'd love to see this go ahead, no interest in participating myself but always like the idea of big races in Ireland, but i won't be counting on it being a sure thing just yet

Enduro

I get what you're saying, but I don't think that there is any major comparison with the Tri events for multiple reasons. I would be a huge sceptic myself about IM Dublin, whereas I'd happily bet my own money that Iterra will happen!

mossym

well i hope so, cause i can think of 1 mod and 1 shopkeeper who are already rocking themselves to sleep every night dreaming of this

shotgunmcos

Ok caveat, I've only done 2 ARs and zero expedition length experience but I do know triathlon from a logistics POV


Triathlon tends to spring up, requires a pull of local volunteers, roads to be closed or semi closed, Garda presence and large public transition areas which alone takes a sizeable chunk of the race OPEX. There are hundreds or thousands of competitors involved. It interrupts trade and transport in the given location on the given day, perhaps for the benefit of the locality. On the upside in this respect it can also bring trade to the locality for the given weekend.


Races that seem to do well have a relationship with the locality and locals of mutual benefit with manageable costs on both sides.


AR is more spread out and although monumental in terms of logistics too it has a few things going for it in this respect. Low number of competitors, maybe 40 teams of 4 tracked by GPS at all times. So, smaller more remote transition areas can work. Not as much of an impact on local trade or transport.


Races that seem to do well are largely out of public view yet show off the countryside like no other event can

Causeway

mossym wrote: »

lot of excitement for the proposed xterra race in ireland this year as well, and it went nowhere despite officially announcements and being part of the xterra tour as well. after that i'd take any of these long term announcements with a serious pinch of salt. until the start line goes up you never know

anyway, this is two years away, should you lot not be planning next year first and leaving 2016 till this time next year? Surely there are loads of ways to get lost between now and then?

I'm going to stick my neck on the block here and say that I'm pretty certain that ITERA Ireland will happen in 2016, there's already been a fair bit of work that has gone into making it possible. The website for anyone who's interested is itera.ie, at the moment it's lacking much content but you can sign up for updates as soon as they happen.

As for next year the Beast of Ballyhoura will play host to the 2015 European Finals, the race is likely to be 72hrs will sits nicely in between past years and the ITERA in 2016.

sconhome

AKW wrote: »

West is BEST!!

Much better than Challenge Galway any day, month or year

Could be interesting year 2016!

With Challenge in June and ITERA in August and Challenge off to a great start with race info already buttoned down it will be better than I first thought.

Neady83

A few more snippets of info. being released

http://www.itera.ie/race-details/

Aug 16th - 23rd 2016

Killarney - The Reeks

sconhome

Entries open next week!! :eek:

http://www.itera.ie/enter.php

topcat77

Looks amazing!! too many things going on this year :-( I'd love to give this type of race a go in the future.

lgk

€800pp early bird until early Jan, after that, €1000 up to early March and €1200 after that.... Big incentive to get teams in early.

career move

Two weeks to go now till ITERA 2016 kicks off

Yesterday the teams received the race schematic:
http://itera.ie/download/Iterasum.pdf
It gives an outline of the stages (length and discipline)
As promised there is a heavy focus on kayaking with 135k to be covered regardless of whether you go long course or short course and two massive stages (50k and 75k). Other 'interesting' things are the stage 2 trek with 5000m of elevation and the 200k mountain bike.
The race website will be live for tracking once the race starts.

There will be tough competition between the Irish teams for a place on the podium and first Irish team also wins a spot in the ARWS final in Australia. Enduro's team took the honours in the ARES Beast of Ballyhoura this time last year and are bound to be one of the favourites but they'll have to be on top of their game this time around for national honours with competition from, amongst others, the Defence forces, DAR Dingle who have experienced ARWS action in Africa this year, a Moxie team bolstered by the addition of Pavel Paloncy and the strong and experienced team making up Rachel's adventurers.
Godzone will likely be favourites for the win but Swecco, Issy adventure, team endurance life and the Irish teams will all give them a good run for it!
Best of luck to all

Neady83

Thanks for that CM

Oh stage 2 will be a toughie, lots of inclines and declines to cover 5,000m.

Looking forward to lining up with some of the best teams in the world.

Initial feelings on the schematic?

shotgunmcos

Initial feelings is that it's true to JT form

Stage 2 50k trek with 5000m ascent on the first night will break up the field earlier than usual in ARWS races

There will be penalties dished out at the end for teams nto taking JTs rules seriously for the stage 4 200km MTB

Teams will struggle to find the CPs in the dark of night 2 on stage 3

joey100

50km and 75km of kayaking is huge, the liffey descent, a pretty long race is around 20km and that's downstream and is still a bit of a slog, top lads doing it in around 2hrs with a good flow behind them for the majority. I hope your in Double sea kayaks for that, I wouldn't fancy that on a sit on top. Comfort is going to be key for that, that's going to be a long time in the boat. TBH, I'm fairly shocked at that distance, that's a huge undertaking! Fair play!

Neady83

joey100 wrote: »

50km and 75km of kayaking is huge, the liffey descent, a pretty long race is around 20km and that's downstream and is still a bit of a slog, top lads doing it in around 2hrs with a good flow behind them for the majority. I hope your in Double sea kayaks for that, I wouldn't fancy that on a sit on top. Comfort is going to be key for that, that's going to be a long time in the boat. TBH, I'm fairly shocked at that distance, that's a huge undertaking! Fair play!

Double sit on tops Joey. Sure we've five days to do it all

Might bring some extra padding for the sit on top

joey100

Double sit on tops??!! Comfort is number one there, that will get you before tiredness! I can't wait to see the kayaking route you's do, wonder will there be any rapids or weirs or will it be lake/sea. I didn't even look at the rest of what yous have to do, I'm just in shock at that!

Neady83

joey100 wrote: »

Double sit on tops??!! Comfort is number one there, that will get you before tiredness! I can't wait to see the kayaking route you's do, wonder will there be any rapids or weirs or will it be lake/sea. I didn't even look at the rest of what yous have to do, I'm just in shock at that!

Bryan had something like this on our kayak on Saturday and it was ridiculously comfy ..... I may opt for one after reading the schematic

[URL] http://www.ebay.ie/itm/RTM-BACKREST-COMFY-SEAT-BACK-REST-SIT-ON-TOP-KAYAK-CANOE-BOAT-DINGY-FISHING-SUP-/141364504790 [/URL]

The first section may be along the coast with some nice Atlantic swells so I'll be bringing a packet of sea sickness tablets.

Second section could be a lake

Third short section could potentially be a river

career move

Neady83 wrote: »

Initial feelings on the schematic?

1) I'm going to have a very sore ass after 200k on the mountain bike

2) I will never, ever want to see a kayak paddle again after stage 3 .....
until stage 8 when I'll likely be fed up of trekking and have very sore feet

career move

@ joey: I pray to god that there are rapids/weirs or I may die of boredom!!!!!

Enduro

career move wrote: »

Godzone will likely be favourites for the win but Swecco, Issy adventure, team endurance life and the Irish teams will all give them a good run for it!

Great summary of the likely racing situation in your post. The above line is the only one I'd differ on. I'd say Godzone will win by a huge margin.

Enduro

joey100 wrote: »

50km and 75km of kayaking is huge, the liffey descent, a pretty long race is around 20km and that's downstream and is still a bit of a slog, top lads doing it in around 2hrs with a good flow behind them for the majority. I hope your in Double sea kayaks for that, I wouldn't fancy that on a sit on top. Comfort is going to be key for that, that's going to be a long time in the boat. TBH, I'm fairly shocked at that distance, that's a huge undertaking! Fair play!

That's proper AR. Distances are huge accross the board. This race is nicely balanced in that the kayaking takes up at least its fair share of the race time. SOTs will be a huge PITA, but its the same for everyone. A bit of an equaliser, as its much harder to build huge time distances in such pigs of boats (and kayaking tends to be the hardest discipline to build gaps on anyway). Will be hell for anyone who hasn't nailed down an efficient forward paddling stroke. That's where the long hours of technique practice will make the difference. Comfort is only possible with efficiency over those distances.

I've have my own guess at where the route will take us. I forsee a lot of sea paddling in the SOTs, which makes the race hostage to the weather. We'll see what happens. Last paddles should be an easy guess (lake/river), and will probably be in Canadians.

I'm hoping that the portage in the second kayak (lake -> river -> sea for that one is my guess) will take us right past one of the best chippers in Ireland, hopefully when it is open. We'll see!

Neady83

Enduro wrote: »

I'm hoping that the portage in the second kayak (lake -> river -> sea for that one is my guess) will take us right past one of the best chippers in Ireland, hopefully when it is open. We'll see!

It closes at 10pm but there's an even better chipper around the corner from it that stays open very late I think there's a few of us thinking of the same route.

mossym

come on guys, you are trying to give the idea this is tough but the main concern is stopping at the chipper?

Neady83

mossym wrote: »

come on guys, you are trying to give the idea this is tough but the main concern is stopping at the chipper?

My two most vivid memories from last year AR are:

1. pushing that blinking bike up mountains
2. crying when we asked the locals if there was a chipper in a little village that we passed through on the second night and there wasn't

Don't underestimate the power of chips when all you've eaten for 48 hours is salami, flapjacks, sweets and tuks

joey100

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

Neady83

joey100 wrote: »

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

Things that will make it easier:

1. We'll be sitting down for a large portion of the first day
2. When we've covered 50km with 5,000m on our feet we'll happily sit into our kayaks again
3. The prospect of chips close to the end of the 75km paddle will motivate us to keep going
3. The last 20km paddle will take us home so we'll keep on chugging at that stage

The thing that will keep me going. Team ARSE (me included) did circa 41km in the Beast last year without back rests (rookie AR mistake) so I will think back to that torturous time when I'm hurting.

I hear you though, it's a lot of kayaking in the first two days and will be tough at night but all we can do is keep moving as best we can and Ivan did warn us earlier in the year that there would in excess of 120km of paddling.

Enduro

Neady83 wrote: »

It closes at 10pm but there's an even better chipper around the corner from it that stays open very late I think there's a few of us thinking of the same route.

I'll have to interrogate you for chipper knowledge once we know the race route

Enduro

joey100 wrote: »

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

You're absolutely spot on. It's a serious amount of time in any boat, never mind the those piggish SOTs! You don't need to worry about frightening or scarying anyone. We're perfectly capable of doing that for ourselves

It's definitely a massively ambitious ask for SOTs. I've done huge kayaking legs in ARs before, but I think this is likely to be the longest time on SOTs for me anyway. Most of the big kayaking legs I've done before have been in 2SKs. It could actually be worse though. Trying to control a blow up canoe on a rough enough Tasman sea for 5 or 6 hours was "interesting"! We were looking jealously at our teammates in the SOT (The jealousy was reversed on an 18 hour river paddle though... the blow up canoe had the fun characteristics of rafting in the rapids). Even worse was taking over teammate's blow up because they had punctured the middle section. So put the 2 best paddlers in the crocked boat and piloted the fecker for 2-3 hours down a tricky shallow river to the stage end. Ah memories... more to be created soon.

Neady83

Enduro wrote: »

I'll have to interrogate you for chipper knowledge once we know the race route

I'll happily give you my recommendations I know a place that does a great deep fried mars bar, in fact, they'll deep fry just about anything that you give them

Enduro

Neady83 wrote: »

I'll happily give you my recommendations I know a place that does a great deep fried mars bar, in fact, they'll deep fry just about anything that you give them

Oh feck! And I was planning to loose weight during the race

shotgunmcos

Deep fried Mars bars.. yuck!
But salty vinegary chips .... nom nom nom

career move

Enduro wrote: »

career move wrote: »

Godzone will likely be favourites for the win but Swecco, Issy adventure, team endurance life and the Irish teams will all give them a good run for it!

Great summary of the likely racing situation in your post. The above line is the only one I'd differ on. I'd say Godzone will win by a huge margin.

Odds on favourites get beaten too

Neady83

Linky to live tracking: http://www.itera.ie/live/

From this side of the world we have:

Shotgunmcos (back from injury), Career Movie and Sconhome from team #TriHarderAR (Team 34)
Enduro from Team Columbia Ireland (Team 6)
Néady from Team ARSE (Team 29)

I'm sure I've left someone out so apologies if I have .... please feel free to edit and add

Dilbert75

Jeez is there nothing will keep Team Triharder (with or without #) down? Team anthem will have to be Chumba Wumba, or whatever they're called.

Enjoy it every one of you. The hard work is done - go do your thing. And precisely commit every detail to memory for the race reports afterwards (yeah right).

pgibbo

Best of luck folks. Can't wait to hear how it goes for you all. :cool:

mossym

best of luck to all taking part, epic looking event, i'm sure you will have an absolute blast

snailsong

Got down to the Point today to see them off in the kayaks. Was surprised to hear that they expected to kayak to Killary in about 5 hours in SOT kayaks. I work at sea and know that coast quite well, around Roonagh is snotty at the best if times so that projection seemed optimistic at best. Had a brief word with Neady and off they went. Following the trackers ever since. It seems the water safety people decided they should all come ashore at Roonagh, about half way, and trek from there. Deteriorating conditions and fading light.
Unfortunately the tracker for Neady's team hasn't responded since 6 o'clock. At that time they were at the back, half way out the bay. Hopefully it's just a tracker issue and they're safely on the trek south. Anybody know anything?

Dilbert75

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.

Firedance

Dilbert75 wrote: »

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.

I was wondering what the story was too. Hopefully all OK, that trip looked bonkers on the map especially knowing the weather was worse in the west