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

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

It's gonna be awesome

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 ��

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.

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!

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

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

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??!! 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!

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.

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 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

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).

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.