Racing the Beast of Ballyhoura
Bruce Duncan / 03.08.2011
<i>Bruce Duncan recently travelled to Ireland for the first time to compete in the Beast of Ballyhoura 36 hour adventure race. He raced with his adidas Terrex team mate Nicola MacLeod as a last minute addition to an Army team (Team Wolfhounds) and here is his report.</i>We arrived on Thursday night, and were made instantly very welcome by Ivan Park, the organiser, and the other marshals, it was a great wee place we were staying, Blackwater Castle, about an hour north of Cork. Arriving early meant we could get plenty of sleep in, and get our kit sorted without any stress. Mark and Billy, the other 2 team members arrived around Friday afternoon, and we set about getting everything ready for our adventurous weekend.
The race maps were given out at 6pm, and as we got marking up and trying to get our heads around the bonus sections we were working out where we might be at what time. It was looking like we wouldn’t be able to get all the bonus CP’s, and as it turned out, that is what Ivan had planned.
3am came round too fast, and we were up and onto a bus up to the start, a gorgeous wee lake, Lough Gur. Here we were to do a short kayak, then a run, then head off on the mountain bikes for 26km following an arrowed route. The start was a little chaotic and we managed to lose a paddle in the mud, and had to head off with the one paddle on the sit on tops! A bit of a killer, but we didn’t lose too much, and took this as our only mistake in the race.
We caught up with the lead teams by the end of the run, and headed off a few minutes behind them on the bike. This section was strange, we didn’t know where we were, or where we were going, a bit different for an adventure race. Half way along we stopped at a wee shooting range, and had to shoot an air rifle and do some archery for a time bonus, along with some puzzles. It was then back onto the bike to the start of the trek.
We arrived in 3rd place for the trek. We had been given the CP locations at the shooting, but didn’t know where we would be starting, and this was revealed when we got there following the arrows. It was a 22km trek, up and over a few hills. It was a good trek, and the legs took a bit of a beating on the hard tracks and road sections.
We overtook one team on this section, as their team captain was being rather sick at the side of the track, he’d begun feeling unwell on Friday, and this was rock bottom for him. He carried on and was towing team members by the end of the race!
