Lythgoes Adrenalin Rush

Horses, Sheep and Greyhounds

Rob / 30.05.2002

The North Face were looking forward to the sea kayaking section as it is one of their strengths, but instead they were stopped, and sent to the Youth Hostel at Killybegs to wait out time before restarting the race. They got a good rest too as Brian Elliot calculated in a penalty to compensate for the time they would have spent on the water.

So, they restarted yesterday with the horse riding from PC11 and like greyhounds set about chasing down the rabbits. They were with Avengers and both were racing hard and enjoying the riding, even when the horses decided to put in the odd gallop! They just hung on. By the end of the stage they had pulled away from Avengers and set off strongly on the mountain trek, only to come across an emergency – a sheep, stuck deep in a boggy hole and in need of rescue.

They couldn’t leave it there, so risked losing their hard earned lead over Avengers to rescue it, but as Keith Byrne said, “it gave us good Karma.� It was one of those days, they were moving faster than anyone on the course and by the time they reached the caves had caught Reebok Adventure. They were stunned that a ranked team had caught them – not surprising when The North Face had started the riding nearly 8 hours after them!

Compared to the teams they were catching they were demoralisingly fast, getting through the caving section in rapid time and shooting past Hellman Moritz on the bike ride. A smiling Chris McSweeny stood on the finish line and said, “if you’d told me yesterday we’d gain 8 hours on teams and finish 4th I’d never have believed you!�