Racing the Beast of Ballyhoura

Rob Howard / 31.07.2013

The next stop in the fast moving AREuro Series calendar is Ireland, where the Beast of Ballyhoura will start on Saturday.  The race is a 40 hour/300km event held in Ballyhoura Country (North Cork and East Limmerick) and based at the 12^th Century Blackwater Castle on the banks of the river Awbeg.

The race, which is recognised as Ireland’s premier adventure race, has been running since 2007 and began as a 24 hour race, then extended to 36 hours.  This year it has lengthened to 40 hours, in part, to join the AREuro Series, and will once again be organised by Causeway Coast Adventure Racing (CCAR) with Ivan Park as Race Director.

 CCAR are unusual organisers in that they are a non-profit making club set up to promote adventure racing, primarily in Northern Ireland where they run a series of 4-6 hour races. The Beast of Ballyhoura is the longest race CCAR organise and they took the role over from the previous organisers in 2011. Most of those involved are active racers themselves and a Beast of Ballyhoura team took place in Expedition Africa earlier this year.

The race has attracted some international competitors, with entries from the Swiss Powerbar team and the Skandia Adventure Team from Denmark. Both will include local racers in their line up, with Skandia being joined by Eoin Keith (probably Ireland’s most experienced racer), and also by Sally Ozanne from the UK.  The Swiss team are joined by Colin Buckley and Julie McCorry, who has never completed a multi-day AR before, though she is an experienced multi-day MTB racer.

Both international teams will be among the favourites as will Team Outfront Events, which includes Paul Mahon and Adrian Hennessy from last year’s winning team.  Another challenger could be Defence Forces AR2, who will be aiming to win the All-Ireland Inter Services Challenge, which is hosted by Beast of Ballyhoura.

In total 21 teams will be taking part and they will have an early start ... 02.00 am on Saturday morning!  They can expect a challenging and varied course, and maybe some surprise challenges, which are a feature of the event.

The area they will be racing in is recognised by Ireland’s Tourism authorities as a national adventure hub, and includes the National Mountain Biking Park 9 (which has 98km of trails), several national walking trails, numerous rivers and lakes, and the Ballyhoura and Galtee mountains.

When they switch on their headlamps in the early hours of Saturday teams will have all this to explore in the race ahead of them, and you can follow their progress on the live race site.  (See the main race website at http://www.beastofballyhoura.com/ to get to the live site once the race has begun.)  This will include news and results updates, photos and videos, team tracking and a live leaderboard.

And there will be coverage right here on SleepMonsters as well, of course!

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