The Beast
The Ending of The Beast
Carrick Armer / 06.08.2017
Teams here at The Beast are steadily dripping in - and we do mean dripping. The fantastic weather we've had for the past couple of days finally broke, giving the remaining teams a wild night out on the hill.
Columbia Ireland, Moxie Racers and 24H Meals arrived in the early hours of the morning, setting the podium. None have had a perfect race, all have taken gambles and risks, and all have worked hard at the front, alongside the sadly retired Roe Valley and Voodoo Performance teams. These five pushed each other hard, and kept the pace incredibly high at the sharp end.
For some of the later teams, the night was wilder than for others, with navigation errors and sleep deprivation plaguing the racers in the long trek leg over the Derryveagh mountains and above the Poisoned Glen. Three of the short coursed teams had seen car lights in the distance and headed towards them aiming for the road, unfortunately the wrong road. They descended off the wrong side of the range, 180-degrees off course, and had to be persuaded back into the right direction by one of the race safety staff. Even Delta Denmark, who arrived back at Letterkenny this morning, remarked to the race director that navigation on the featureless tops in the dark had been incredibly difficult. There's more than one GPS trace on the tracking site that shows teams walking in sleep-deprived circles.
Others took the decision to skip non-mandatory CPs and accept the penalty. BigO started the rough drag up Errigal, but decided while still on the lower slopes that trying to negotiate the scree while half asleep was probably a bad idea. Even back in town, close to the finish, there were hazards. The winners, Columbia Ireland, had to negotiate closing time at some of the bars in town. Less than 500m from the finish, one of Kinsale AR's racers had a close call with a lamppost, a potentially awkward way to end your race.
Those who avoided the worst of it were fatigued but happy. Adventure Race Squad Extreme (no, I'm still not abbreviating it...) were, in their own words, ecstatic to have finished. The format of the race has made for some incredible tense racing, and the 40-45hr duration is right on the bordeline of sleep/no-sleep strategy, meaning many racers are staring the thousand-yard-stare of the
Only two teams remain on course now. Kinsale Raiders and Dogleap - the latter will likely be the lasat through the finish, but potentially fourth in the overall rankings. They're both due in in the next half hour, and then The Beast will be sated for 2017.
SleepMonsters
