Art O'Neill Challenge 2013

It was D-Day! Well, almost. It was Friday 11th of January, the day before the Art O'Neill Challenge. It's hard to know what to do in relation to sleep for an overnight race. I don't really think there was anyway to properly acclimatize to an all-nighter so I didn't really do anything differently. Bar having a few glasses of wine Thursday night at at work outing and "carb loading" the be-jaysus out of it with a really nice dinner at Nimmos by the spanish arch! Slow roasted Cow's cheek, unreal. Oh ya this is meant to be about running.

Anyway, got up Friday morning around half 9 to get things together and buy the last few bits and pieces of the mandatory race gear. Didn't really eat too much all day. I was eating plenty the previous couple of days so body was well stocked with energy. Didn't want to go into the race with a full stomach, doesn't usually end well.

The plan was then to head back to bed for a couple of hours sleep before we left. It was wishful thinking with the thought of the race starting in a few hours time, it was never going to happen!

8pm came around, Anna called over and kindly offered to drive so she could see the carnage first hand! Ivan drove in from Headford and off we went, Dublin Castle bound!

Arrived, got registered and found a nice corner for ourselves to talk shop.

"What have I done..."

Registration was done by 11 so that left loads of time for Ultra-ultrarun-talking. Fair play to Anna for sticking this out for the weekend!

L to R: Kill, Padraig, Myself and Ivan

12am saw the Walkers off, 1am saw a few Hybrid/Ultra runners who thought might be a bit tight for time, and then 2am there was us...

Not a very clear pic but, I'm on the left of the photo, Ivan to my left and Kill to his left. We're obviously going too fast for the camera!

Off we went and turned south on the N81 all the way to the Right turn at the Blue Haven Pub. It was a surreal start to say the least. It was some time after 2am and we were in a group of 4 running through Tallagh just as people were stumbling of out pubs and clubs. Kill, Ivan, myself and Eoin Keith! It took a while to sink in but we were in the lead group and pulling away! What was I doing up in front, starting a 55km race at this pace will surely not end well. This genuinely wasn't part of the race plan but we just settled into what felt like a comfortable pace and ended up in the lead group. "Comfortable pace" is a funny thing, with the adrenaline kick of finally starting the race, it being 2am running through Tallagh, it's hard to judge normal comfortable pace.

This continued all the way out into the darkness of stone cross when the hill's started to kick in around 15km. Ivan and Eoin showed serious power in leaving me for dead on the hills so it ended up I was on my own from then on. Gradually catching walkers in the darkness. It was really nice running a race in the blackness of the country. Black but not yet black enough to turn on the headtorch. You could barely make out the grassy verges so that was enough. I eventually turned on the torch after feeling bad for scaring the be-jaysus out of a few walkers. No real way of telling I was coming up behind them until I was just beside them, emerging the the darkness without warning. It woke them up if anything! In general though, if I didn't frighten them too much the walkers were full of support and gave plenty of room to pass.

The short-cut down through the private farm was a nice downhill section but with road shoes on, it was slippery as hell so pretty much slided my way down to the river, crossed the bridge and began the climb up to the first checkpoint, aptly named, CP1. I must note, there were a few walking breaks at this point, it's a pretty nice climb to CP1 so I was definitely feeling it at this stage. Here's the elevation profile of the route:

Not a great sign I was getting tired at this stage, that was meant to be the easy part, it was going to be a case of hanging in there for dear life from here on. Clocked into CP1 at 2:22:09, still in 3rd place. Spent a few mins trying to find my bag, eventually finding it and packing my bag with all the mandatory race gear, some water, changed shoes to something with a bit more grip and had a banana. It felt like about 30sec but I actually spent over 7mins arseing around CP1 getting my gear together. So clocked out of CP1 and onwards to the Wicklow mountains. After a couple of KM's of fireroad, it opened up onto open mountain. This is where things get interesting. Fog was down, it was pitch black but I was very grateful of the torch's Trish kindly got on the cheap from the states, thanks Trish! Out with the compass and map and took a bearing, hoping to find Billy Byrnes Gap. Ascending the hillside, I spotted a torch in the distance, one of the walkers maybe. But it was coming towards me, this was strange. "Ivan?!" and his response, "JOHN!!! Man am I happy to see you!" Long story but it ended up Ivan alone on the mountain-side looking for the Gap. Never having recce'd this section, it was never going to be easy for him so he was happy to meet anyone at all, it was just lucky it was me! Ivan didn't look any bit tired, I was quite the opposite but struggling on. I had the upper hand in navigation (in that I actually had recce'd this section, whether or not I could remember it is a different story). So we stuck together and headed for the Gap. It took longer than I expected to find it and then down we went, running, stumbling, falling our way down to Ballinagee Bridge in the darkness. I had hoped to keep higher and enter the forest at the proper entrance which is about 500m from the forest corner by the river but uphill. It didn't go exactly to plan and we hit the corner of the forest pretty much dead on. I'm not sure why but I thought it'd be best to find the proper entrance and continued to climb the hill along the edge of the forest to find the entrance. Ground was tough to run up and this def wasted loads of time. We should have just ran into the forest and pushed our way through on to the lower fireroad. Ah hindsight is a great thing.

We ran down the fireroad to the road, crossed Ballinagee Bridge and clocked into CP2. We were sure we'd have lost a few places at this stage but ended up in 2nd and 3rd place at CP2. Again, I had to take on water here, eat and generally arsed about again resulting in another long stop-over of 6 and a half mins. I was feeling pretty rough now at this stage, it would've been nice to clock a podium finish but getting to the finish at all was going to hurt so all I could do was hang in there. I need more hill work. The hopes of a podium finish were dashed when another runner came flying through CP2, and was away again before we could even say hello, how rude.   

Clocked back out of CP2 and off we went along St. Kevins Road towards Glenreemore Brook. Another route decion had to be made here. In one of the recces we avoided St. Kevins road and just went straight onto the fireroad and this route involved a tough route through some of the forest as to avoid having to go around in a big loop. On the map it looked as if St. Kevins road might be a better route and one where we wouldn't loose too much time. To our dismay, while running on St. Kevins road, we saw 3 lights up in the distance taking the route we recce'd, damn, must be faster. Caught these lads by the gate to the brook and off we went up towards Art's cross. We were now all onto Glenreemore Brook and ran up towards the corner of the forest and there, as planned, we broke off right, crossed the river and began the final big climb up to Art's cross. The three other lads were now behind us again but not far, we were pulling away for now but the fog was getting very very thick so we'd have to stop soon to try figure out how to make it down to the finish. No sign of the sun rising at this stage. 

The fog was really getting thick at this stage so navigation was going to be very tricky. We kept climbing and climbing until it flattened out on top and we had two options, go left and look for the cross so we could take a proper bearing, or have a guess at our current location and chance taking a bearing from where we were to find the three lakes. Not finding the three lake could very easily result in descending into the wrong valley, which meant no hot chocolate waiting for us. We couldn't afford to let this happen so there we stood with the map out trying to make a decision when all at once, the 3 lads appeared from the darkness. "How'r the lads?" I enquired, "any chance ye know where we actually are?" getting a very relieving  "we know exactly where we are" response. As they proceeded to pull out a fancy GPS thing. Excellent! The were happy enough to let us tag along and it ended up us chatting away to Billy, Grattan and Stephen all the way down to the finish at Glenmalure Valley. With the five of us finishing just under 6 hours 40 mins, a long time to be standing never mind running!

Finally!

Anna was patiently waiting for us down at the finish, up bright and early herself for the 1 and a half hour drive from Dublin to the finish in Glenmalure, weird we had just run that!

Plenty of congratulations and back patting down at the finish, we very quickly got into some warm clothes and made a beeline for the hot chocolate stand. Sweet sweet warm liquid, ahhhhh...

Waited around to see people gradually trickle down Table Track, including Padraig who had a great run himself finishing in 48th place in his very first Ultra distance, many more to come! He was the one that talked me into the Connemara Ultra! A changed man!

Walkers were trickling in just before we left, serious respect to these people, they left at 12 am and some were finishing up 17 hours later! Now thats sore feet whatever your doing!

A great event and good to know that the DWMRT and all the volunteers have your back if things go belly up. An event that Declan and his team can be proud of. Fingers crossed this goes ahead again next year in some shape or form.

Off down the road into the Glenmalure lodge for a well deserved full Irish. An amazing event that will definitely have to be tackled again next year. Kill will have to have another shot at it too. We arrived to the finish to hear the bad news that Kill had to drop out after the road section, stomach was not playing ball with him on that occasion. A pity after such a great start but that's how it goes sometimes.

Also congratulations to the winner Eoin Keith. He showed serious character to win the event AGAIN, even after only 11 days previous to that he smashed the Irish 48 hr record and broke 300 miles for the 72 hours at the Across the Years event in Phoenix, Arizona. Sick.

Here's my Garmin Route. (forgot to stop it at the finish for a while): http://connect.garmin.com/activity/263836535