ITERA Ireland
Follow the Dotted Line
Rob Howard / 16.08.2016
Registration for ITERA Ireland took place at the INEC this morning with the doors opening at 9am sharp and most teams were waiting outside – keen to sign on the dotted line underneath text which said, in summary, “I want to run, cycle and paddle 600km down the West Coast of Ireland for 5 days of non-stop adventure” and “I can look after myself.”
Just where that adventure would be was on display, very clearly on display with the biggest race map anyone had ever seen. It’s about 5m square ... and it has a long dotted line on it! There is something about a point to point course that is wonderfully appealing, as well as scary and intimidating. This one was certainly a bit scary.
The coloured dots told a simple story. A lot of paddling in the early stages of the race, then a long, long mountain bike ride, and two big mountain trekking stages near the end. I’ll look at the course in a bit more detail in a later article but as teams tried to take in the scope of journey ahead and then delved into the detail of the route book it was the water crossings which were most discussed; mainly a big, tidal sea swim towards the end of the course. A picture in the route book of a very scary looking cliff jump off a small island, and another of mountain biking inside a cave system took the eye as well.
Many of the Irish teams I spoke to had made pretty good guesses about where they were going, working from the advance distances/disciplines the race had sent out. The start is a long drive north in Westport and a few had even guessed they might go there, though one UK team I spoke to had been expecting to go further South, rather than North. Not that it matters, they all know now and will all set off on the same journey tomorrow at midday.
Some teams were a bit more wide-eyed and wobbly legged than others as they stared up at the map. There are quite a few here with limited expedition racing experience and Race Director James Thurlow told them the first sea paddle would be when they found out if they’d done enough paddle training!
Japanese team Fujin Raijin are in that position as they have never travelled to an international race before and only completed shorter races at home. Taiki Fukushima told me he is a runner with no real adventure race experience so his baptism into the world of expedition racing will be Atlantic Waters of Clew Bay. Makoto Suzuki said he is more of an orienteer, so he will be in charge of the navigation. None of them speak much English at all, so stopping to ask the way won’t be easy – they probably wouldn’t understand the accents the replies came in any way! (Same goes for most of the teams really.)
Through the morning the teams, now all wearing their Irish green race bibs, used the space at the conference centre to spread out their kit and took a table each to spread out their maps, hunched over them for a few hours as the box and gear planning began in earnest.
Next on the schedule is the briefing at 14.00 and then there is a Q&A with captains at 17.00 after which all the kit bags should be dropped off and the teams can get a final nights fitful sleep ahead of a 6am transfer to the start tomorrow. They’ll probably dream about that map ...
SleepMonsters
