Padraig and myself decided another AON route Recce should be done. To be honest I think we would have been fine without it but the weather was looking good for the weekend and what better place to get a training run in than on the Art O'Neill route itself. We chose the last section because by our reckoning, its the toughest bit, navigationally and terrain-wise.
We decided on Sunday morning to leave dark and early at 6am from Galway (thanks Anna for the loan of her Clio, I need to get my car taxed again in the new year after a few months of no tax, just a few...) where we had arranged to meet up with Ivan Slovak. An accomplished Ultra-runner himself, we knew we would have our work cut out keeping up with him but decided it'd be good training for us anyway!
We arrived at our start point, Ballinagee Bridge, a bit before 09:00. Lovely morning when we arrived so we knew a nice run was ahead of us. Changed into running suits, compared gear and explained choices as all runners seem to do. It seems a constant strive for all runners to find the "perfect" gear set up. It's a personal choice but we were pretty confident with all our choices, except Padraig and his shoes, one more chance he reckons. A good place to test them out anyway!
The planned route was going to take us 3-4 hours so I kept Breakfast to a banana and water. I had eaten a nice bit the evening before so I knew there was going to be no shortage of fuel. Decided against bringing water too, not warm enough so just took on a few sups before we headed off at maybe 09:15ish? I brought by Osprey pack to carry extra layers, phone, keys, camera, map, compass. Thats travelling light, on the night of the AON it'll be full to the brim with the
kit list! I didn't really feel the need to load up the bag to simulate race conditions and get used to carrying a bit of weight, to be honest, I couldn't be arsed and just wanted to enjoy the run as comfortably as possible.
We headed across the bridge and instead of crossing over to the river following Kevin's road, we took the more direct forest road according to
Eoin Keith's race route 2011. Breaking off the fireroad and crossing the forest bit looks a lot easier on the map than it was in real life! There must be an easier way but alas we didn't find it. Maybe turn off forest road a bit sooner we reckoned. It's only a short bit anyway so we didn't mind too much.
Popped out of the forest at Glenreemore Brook and went up along the river until the corner of the forest. Here we crossed the river and put the head down for the climb up to Art's cross. It's a tough one. Ran about 3/4's of it but I really don't see that happening after having covered 45km on the night of the race. Will do my best though! A lot happier with the route this time, kept high and a little to the left of the ridge to gradually gain elevation. Could maybe have tried gain more altitude earlier on but I doubt it'll make too much difference. Made it up to the cross and took a well earned break and got time for a few pic's:
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| We found it! |
A nice sight to finally find Art's cross unlike our last Recce! Used the compass here to take a bearing for the three lakes because they're out of sight. This will be the interesting part on the night/morning of the race. If the visibility is very bad, finding the lakes will be interesting to say the least! The land from the cross to the Lakes is pretty featureless so its easy to go off course and not find the way down. After nearly 50km by that stage it'd be nice not to have to add any more unnecessary km's!
The next bit to the lakes and past is pretty tricky. Lots of wet bog and huge "bog walls" that had us on all fours to try negotiate. We tried finding the best route with each of us taking a slightly different route past the lakes but to be honest there's no easy way. I know now not to go too near the lake. A few very wet patches I was sinking fast in if I didn't move quick enough. Best to avoid if you're by yourself!
Lovely run down to Table Track, I seem to be enjoying the downhills more and more each time I do them. I put it down to the shoes having plenty of grip: Inov8 Baregrip 200 which I love for this type of stuff. Nice and light and with the minimal soles, not once do I ever go over on my weak ankles. Not so great on fire-roads with wet rocks.
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| Moving nicely down to Avonbeg river. |
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| And down Table Track... |
We got down as far as where we joined the path by the river we found on the last recce. It's pretty much straight downhill to the finish from here so we just turned here and went back the same way. The climb up to the two "Three Lakes" was pretty tough from here so pretty much all hiking to get back up and across to Art's cross, traversing across the open bog again with plenty of expletives as we came across 6ft bog walls again. Unforgiving terrain!
Back to Art's cross where we stopped for a breather. It gets cold very fast as soon as you stop so it wasn't long again before were were hurtling down towards the forest again. The steeper it got, the more fun I had on the way down. There seems to be an optimum speed I found to "dance" over rocks/bogholes/unknown lumps in heather. Any faster and I'd be out of control (which did happen now and again) and any slower and I'd wouldn't have my other foot down fast enough to stabilize myself after slipping of a sudden change in footing resulting in a spectacular fall. What a way to spend a Sunday morning:
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| This is the life! |
We re-grouped after each of us taking slightly different paths down and had a nice jog down to Kevin's road and back along the river to the Fire-road and back to the car.
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| Can't beat a bit of Kevins Road, the end in sight! |
In the end I felt great to be honest. No signs of running out of energy towards the end so it seems I don't need too much to keep going. Or maybe I don't feel hungry because my stomach shuts down all digestion. This would be fine for the shorter stuff like today but on a longer run I need to be eating so I'm not sure how it's going to go, fingers crossed! I'm going to try force myself to eat early on in the AON race while I still can digest and then hang on for dear life towards the end when things start to get tough. Getting to Art's Cross on the night/morning of the race is going to be a great feeling, it's pretty much downhill from there on. Well...with the little problem of crossing the bogs again but we won't think about that too much yet!
A few more long runs now in the next few weeks. I think my weekly milage will take a hammering due to it being Christmas and all. I've been consistently doing more than I ever did since the marathon. Roughly 50-60 mpw. But the majority of that is running 5miles twice a day. So in terms of Ultra-running, it's prob pretty crap miles. I feel I should be doing 2 long runs a week but we'll see how it works out on the night. I've barely been getting one long run in a week. It'll be a good learning experience anyway!!
