ITERA Ireland
Into The Second Night
Rob Howard / 19.08.2016
As ITERA Ireland moves into the second night of the race almost all of the teams are on the second big paddling stage, moving down Lough Corrib and the Corrib River towards Galway. Conditions could hardly be more different to the first paddle. Today the weather is calm and the inland waters they are paddling on are glassy, allowing steady progress southwards.
There are still 3 teams on the first trek across the Maum Turk mountains and they will are racing to make the 22.00 cut off at Transition 3. All of them are still full course, but the trekking has been difficult and slow, resulting in them struggling to beat the cut-off despite the shortened course.
When I spoke to Chris Caulfield of Moxie Races at TA3 he explained, “It is a really wild area up there. There are no paths and it is really rocky and rugged. It’s hard to make progress and the conditions were tough. The mist was so thick you could hardly see your team mates a few paces away and this made the navigation really hard.
“We caught up Godzone and Issy who had been an hour ahead of us, so we were surprised to see them, but they’d been hunting for the checkpoint. It was particularly hard to find routes onto ridges. Also there is no water up there at all so we had to carry a lot. It was a good testing stage, but slow going.”
Unfortunately Caulfield had to pull out of the race with an injury and Race Director James Thurlow brought his team into TA3. They are now one of several non-competitive teams on the race leaderboard, continuing with as much of the course as they are able to.
The list of short course teams has also grown to 10 and those who opted to take the much easier short route on the Western Way are probably glad they did now. It has allowed them to move rapidly along the course so they are now paddling in amongst the leading full course teams. The short option has done its job of compressing the race field well. (On the photos you might notice some racers wearing black bibs – this indicates a team is on the short course.)
All of which leaves 16 teams still on the full course at the moment, about half of the race field. They are led by Team FMR of France who have gradually opened up a lead after passing SWECO on the overnight trek. In the middle of the day these two teams and ADGE Raid Aventure were all trekking within sight of each other but they are now well separated on the paddle into Galway. Another French team, Issy Aventure Absoluraid are in 4th, so they are very much the dominant nation at the moment.
The top Irish team are Rachel’s Irish Adventures and the defending champions Godzone Mountain Hardwear are in 8th place. Warren Bates has been ill since the start, hoping to push through the viral infection he’s suffering from, but it’s not been an easy start to the race and when I saw him trekking and asked how he was he just gave me a thumbs down and had a grim look on his face.
The plan for the second paddle stage had been to portage through Galway City and continue with another sea paddle across Galway Bay, but the sea paddle has now been cancelled so teams will start riding down the Wild Atlantic Coast from Galway tonight. This lengthens an already long bike stage but I doubt the teams will mind missing a second sea paddle, this one at night. They’ll just be glad to get out of their kayaks!
SleepMonsters
