Beast of Ballyhoura
The Beast is Back
Rob Howard / 31.07.2014
The 40 hour Beast of Ballyhoura Adventure Race is held in S.E. Ireland every year and this year has attracted its biggest entry of 28 teams, 7 of them international visitors. (As the race will be next year’s European Championships some of them may be planning ahead and getting the lie of the land.)
Teams will be arriving at the race HQ at Blackwater Castle and outdoor activities centre in the village of Castletownroche today and tomorrow, and the race flag will soon be flown from the tower to show ‘The Beast’ is in residence.
Race Director Ivan Park and his team from Causeway Coast Adventure Racing Club organise the race with Ballyhoura tourism and have a testing weekend in store for the competitors … and a few surprises planned. The mixed teams of 4 have a 40 hour time limit to cover as much of the course as they can and the race is based on a score orienteering system with a series of mandatory checkpoints and optional CP’s at which they can collect additional points.
Until they arrive teams won’t know exactly what is in store, but the outline of the route has been published and is as follows, but with the first long paddling taken out as it was felt the course was too long.
Start Short Foot Orienteering 1km
Section 1.1 Kayak 20km
Section 1.2 Swim 600m
Section 1.3 Foot Orienteering 11km
Section 1.4 Kayak 13km
TA1 Kit/Bike Boxes
Section 2.1 Mountain Bike 50km
Section 2.2 Water Based Task 3.5km
Section 2.3 Mountain Bike 38km
Section 2.4 Foot Based Task 1km-5km
Section 2.5 Mountain Bike 28km
TA2 Kit Boxes
Section 3.1 Kayak 20km
Section 3.2 Foot Orienteering 25km
TA3 Kit Boxes
Section 4.1 Mountain Bike 27km
Section 4.2 Foot Orienteering 5km
Section 4.3 Mountain Bike 20km
Finish
The visiting teams include Merrell Denmark and Team Powerbar from Switzerland, who have raced CCAR events before, the Czech AR and Dutch Adventure teams, Beacon Adventure Racing from the UK and an all female team from Scandinavia called Mind For Adventure.
SleepMonsters will be covering the race live from Friday and the race will have its own live page with a leaderboard, course flyover and team tracking at http://www.beastofballyhoura.com
SleepMonsters
