Crafty Divils At The Tear Shamrock Adventure Race

Press Release / 18.04.2019

When the race calendar for 2019 came out in late 2018, one race that caught my eye was The ‘Tear Shamrock Adventure Race’, which was to take place in March 2019, in Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny. 

The things which made it appealing were;

- it was to take place in a part of the country that I’d never been to before, (and what better way to discover an area than during an adventure race),

- it was a classic adventure race where you’d have to navigate your way around the course yourself using a map and compass, (something that I wanted to get more practice in under race conditions)

- it was going to be 8 hours in duration, (a distance that would suit me fine if I could get fit enough for it, as I was still recovering from a fairly serious injury)

- it was being organised by Cormac MacDonnell, a good friend of ours, who had raced DAR 24 on our team, ‘Crafty Divils Adventure Racing’ last June. 

Anything which Cormac puts his hand to was bound to be as good as it could possibly be, as Cormac has lots of experience in adventure racing, and he’s really passionate about promoting this sport ... it really was a no brainer, we had to enter it!

Finding A Team

As the ‘Tear Shamrock Adventure Race’ is raced by teams of 2 or 4 people, the next thing that I had to do was to get a teammate to race with me.  My regular teammates, Lorraine Horan and James Connolly, were already committed to doing ‘The Race’ in Co. Donegal on the following weekend, so that ruled them out. 

Our other team member, Kevin Stephens, was racing ‘Godzone’ in New Zealand in the week beforehand, so he was out of the equation!  I decided to ask a friend of mine from Killarney if he’d give it a go.  Joe O’Leary is a very accomplished mountain biker and ultra-runner, so I knew that this would be no problem for him.

Plotting a Course

Cormac, the event organiser, continued to send out regular updates to the entrants.  On the Wednesday before the event, he emailed out the co-ordinates and the race card to us.  We had to find the checkpoints (cp’s) on the map of the area, which we had already purchased ourselves, and plot a route for us to follow during the race.  I had never done this, or navigated for a full race before, so I was a little nervous about having it all on my own shoulders.  However, having done a Mountain Skills course with Noel O’Leary of Irish Adventures a few weeks previously, I managed to do it without any problems.

Stage 1 was an orienteering section around the town of Graiguenamanagh.  At 10am, there was a bunch start, and after 100 metres as we ran over the bridge, I grabbed a map of the town from one of the volunteers, which had the 6 CP’s marked on it.  They could be knocked off in any order, but I had only another 100 metres as I ran, while looking down at the map to decide which order to take them in!  Here goes nothing ... my 1st navigation choice of the race! 

I plotted a route, and turned left, as others went straight on in another direction with their route choices.  While I had the map in my hand, Joe had the race card in his.  We worked well through this section.  I called out the directions and turns that we were going to take to Joe, as he called out the description of the CP’s to me. 

We had no problems knocking off the 6 checkpoints, all of which were mandatory, before we headed off on a 2km run along the river Barrow to the kayaking section of the race. 

Onto the Water And Off To Brandon

As the river Barrow was flooded after all of the recent rain, the race organisers, Cormac and Brian Keogh took the wise decision to have the kayaking take place on a canal which ran alongside the river for safety reasons.  After the riverbank run, we arrived at the transition at Ballykeenan lock, where we began the kayak section on double sit on top kayaks.  Joe hasn’t much kayaking experience, so he relied on me to give him a few pointers, but he had no trouble at all on the 1.5 kms to dib at a the CP, and back to Ballykeenan lock again.  It would have been no trouble for him to have completed a much longer section of kayaking, and I’d gladly kayak with him again. 

From Ballykeenan lock we retraced our steps 2kms back along the riverbank to the adventure centre in Graiguenamanagh.  Here, it was onto our mountain bikes for the cycle towards Brandon.  We headed off on the ever climbing road which led us into the woods to T2 on the side of the mountain, where we abandoned our bikes and headed off uphill on foot.  The rain which had started to fall as we began the kayaking, was falling incessantly by now. 

After trying a route up a firebreak in the woods, which we had to retreat from, we bush bashed straight through the forest to find the trail, which we powered up with our Leki poles to the summit.  We dibbed in at the steel cross at the top before retracing our steps down to the bikes again.  From the summit of the highest point in Co. Kilkenny, we had the choice of going for 2 more bonus CP’s, but I decided not to go for them, in the hope of making fast enough ground to get 2 more bonus CP’s later in the race, one of which was worth more points than the 2 on Brandon. 

I had a tumble on the wet rocks as we ran down, but I got away with nothing worse than a couple of bloody knees and a bruised ego!  After getting off the track, we took a shortcut through an area which had a few briars.  Poor Joe’s tender legs got a few scratches, and I heard all about it from him for the next 24 hrs.

Onto the bikes again for the extremely fast 5kms down to base again.  The roads were a little hairy on some corners, where there was lots of small loose gravel, but we made great time flying down the hill. 

The first part of the next section of the race was a lovely spin on the tow path alongside Barrow, heading south towards St. Mullins, on the Co. Carlow side of the river.  I started to get hamstring cramps along here, but thankfully Joe must have raided KFC’s for salt, so I swallowed a packet which he gave to me and off we went again.  We had no problems finding any of the 4 CP’s along here on this amazing trail over the next hour, before we turned towards the Blackstairs Mountains and began to climb again.  This brought us to the transition at The Piano Gallery at the entrance to the forestry.

Exploring Three Counties

We crossed into Co. Wexford at times on these hills, so that was a nice bit of exploring of 3 counties which I’d rarely been to before.  We picked off the 2 CP’s on this section with little bother, before we came to a lovely bit of single track to ride on, down to the col at ‘The Meetings’.  We had to have our wits about us for this section, it was like a river with the amount of water flowing down it. 

There was also plenty of sharp rocks, deep, water filled holes, branches on the track and even a couple of trees down across it which we had to lug the bikes around.  We still couldn’t travel too carefully going down here, as we had to be at ‘The Meetings’ within 30 minutes of the leaders to be allowed to go for the bonus CP which was halfway up the mountain at Cathier’s Glen.  Alas, we arrived at that point 31 minutes after the race leaders, so the race marshal had to break the news to us that we couldn’t go for that bonus 100 point CP. 

Ah well, what could we do but carry on down the hill to collect 2 more CP’s.  If we were at the 2nd of these before 5pm, we were going to be given the coordinates for a surprise bonus CP which was worth 150 points, so not all was lost! 

As we left The Meetings, we fell in with Paul and Jay from Kilkenny.  We were getting on well with them all day, sometimes we passed them, at other times they got in front of us.  Seeing as we had lots of time to spare now that we couldn’t go for the bonus points at the cave, the 4 of us decided to stick together until the finish.  This worked out well for Paul and Jay, as they got to make use of some of Joe’s precious stash of salt to ease their cramps. 

We had a route choice going down here.  From the map, the top track looked like it would be the better choice, as the lower track seemed to disappear off the map for a few hundred metres.  Jay agreed with me, so off we went.  After about 500 metres, we had to abandon the top track as it was just too rough and intermittent.  Even a top mountain biker like Joe couldn’t make any decent progress on it, so what chance did I have!   We biked down across a couple of rough fields to join the bottom track, but this supposedly better track also had some hairy sections! 

The 1st of these 2 CP’s was hard to find as it was 1km further down the hill than where it should have been, (Cormac says it was 200 metres, but I don’t think anyone who biked down here agreed with him on that one).  It was no harm to keep us on our toes though Cormac.

 After these 2 CP’s, we headed for Borris via Ballymurphy.  Despite a bit of head scratching as we searched for the bonus CP, (we were looking for it under the viaduct instead of on top of it),  we found it and headed for the finish line.  On the way we had to find another CP at Clashganny lock, which we did without any problems.

To The Finish

From here, we just had about 3kms to go to the finish line into a headwind on the towpath beside the river Barrow.  The 4 of us, (not the band), got to the adventure centre at 5.02pm, with almost an hour to spare as the course wasn’t closing until 6pm.

We were in some state as we crossed the line and dibbed in for the last time of the day, filthy, sore, tired, but happy with our performance and glad that we achieved what we had aimed for.  

What a great race this was, and we’re looking forward to returning again in 2020 to do it all over again.

To round this off, I’d like to thank our sponsors who get behind us and enable us to get out and compete in these events.  Cheers to Crafty Divils Brewing, Ardblair Sports Importers, Leki UK, SpringPR, Gourmet Tart Company, Cordoola Developments LTD and Fexco.