Anybody else doing Eireman?

911sc

Nothing we can do about the weather....just be prepared and race.

griffin100

Having looked at the forcast for sunday and the wind speed I'm starting to worry that the swim will be cancelled or curtailed. Anyone know what courtown harbour looks like in a SW wind of 50kph? http://www.met.ie/forecasts/county.asp

Hopefully the heavy rain will knock down the wave height.

secman

Presumably if there is a small craft warning, then safety boats cannot go out and from an Insurance point of view the sea swim cannot go ahead as having no safety boats would negate the policy. That is what happens in the open sea swims, the small craft waring is the key issue. A few years ago the Dun Laoire harbour race was cancelled due to a small craft warning despite the fact that the waters inside the harbour were like a pancake, outside was a different issue, a large wash. Harbour Master point blank refused race to go ahead due to small craft warning!
Hopefully it won't come to this after all the hard work invested to date by the organisers.

Best of luck to all competitors

Secman

IronTractorBoy

i thought that you are normally allowed to use thier supplied bags so it is the same for everybody. Plus I am on the irish sea so finding an extra box is a bit hard.
Could they get a few other bigger boats?

SucCes09

training for this all year - the wind better cop itself on....

ComDubh

This is a newbie question really. I've only done one triathlon before, the charity sprint one in Greystones last year. I'm trying the Eireman Sprint on Sunday and am wondering if the standard in an event like this is much higher than in a charity one? I'm not worried about the winning times, I'm wondering about the other end and are there usually many entrants who are only aiming to finish it in one piece?

BTW, I'd a swim on Saleen beach this morning, that's a few miles north of Courtown, and it was very lumpy indeed. I'm not a great swimmer though, and I expect Courtown has more shelter anyway.

Good luck to everyone on the day!

interested

ComDubh wrote: »

This is a newbie question really. I've only done one triathlon before, the charity sprint one in Greystones last year. I'm trying the Eireman Sprint on Sunday and am wondering if the standard in an event like this is much higher than in a charity one? I'm not worried about the winning times, I'm wondering about the other end and are there usually many entrants who are only aiming to finish it in one piece?

BTW, I'd a swim on Saleen beach this morning, that's a few miles north of Courtown, and it was very lumpy indeed. I'm not a great swimmer though, and I expect Courtown has more shelter anyway.

Good luck to everyone on the day!

you should be fine. Since its the first year its impossible to tell the standard but I think in general there will be a good few people in that field with similar or less experience that yourself. You're likely to find the cycle and run course flatter than greystones at least.
Good luck

Duffman'05

Anyone got any tips for what to eat/not eat tonight?:rolleyes:

Bambaata

Best of luck all. I'm very jealous!!!! I hope it all goes to plan for ye all and i look forward to all the race reports.

MrCreosote

Anyone know if the swim went ahead?

Still lashing down here in Kerry- I'd say it'll be a rough old day for them all!

ultraman1

swim was cancelled

osnola ibax

ultraman1 wrote: »

swim was cancelled

Aw no, that's terrible

Bambaata

thats sad to hear. is there any online tracking of the competitors?

bagus

Gutted about the swim, both for the organizers and the competitors.

mloc123

did the sprint, 2k run instead of the swim. Cold, wet and windy.

I say the HIM winner, Italian guy, come in and got to chat to him briefly. He thought he was the winner anyway, seemed a little bit pissed that nobody could confirm it... Or had any official welcome.

Duffman'05

mloc123 wrote: »

did the sprint, 2k run instead of the swim. Cold, wet and windy.

In a nutshell:pac:

A pretty tough course overall I felt - going up some of those hills into the wind - murder:p

Gutted about the swim:(

Sungodbr

raging bout the swim, but on flipside prob the fastest olympic i will ever do!

MrCreosote

Well done to all who competed! Sorry to hear about the swim.

At least they had a contingency plan though.

snack_ie

Watch this space explode.

Race was a complete farce.
Contingency plans were ok, however as for the marshalling.

* The HIM was only 17km run, cause there was no lead cyclist for runner, and the lead runner was sent the wrong way and hence everyone followed suit.
* Olympic Race - Leader was sent the wrong way on the bike, and ended up doing 60km not 40km, and then 2nd/3rd/4th were sent the wrong way on the run and ended up doing 17km instead of 10km
* Similar story with the Sprint
* Alot of the Ironman competitors were sent the wrong way after they came of the bike, its not that much to ask that after months of training that you be sent the right way on the run
* For all the Eireman posters could they not get posters for the corners directing the sprint/oly/HIM/IM courses or spray paint it onto the road

Felt sorry for Eoin, his luck and weather, it could have been so so different.

Sungodbr

Have to say, i did not feel all of the marshals knew what was going on, I asked a marshal was I supposed to do one or two laps of the run and he shrugged his shoulders, I also witnessed the HIM (i think) runners and cyclists almost colliding on the way out of transition because they had been routed to cross each others paths, feel sorry for the guys and all competitors that they had to change all the plans because of the weather, that is really bad for the 1,2,3,4 placers, fuming would not even go close to how they must feel tonight...

mloc123

snack_ie wrote: »

Race was a complete farce.

Didn't want to be the first to say it but I expected a bit of a back lash on here alright. First time and all but things were a bit of a mess.

I think the sprint marshalling was okay, very little could go wrong on it... however if I had not reached the turn around on the run with a group of people I'm not sure I would have realised.

Edit: Anyone know the winning time on the sprint?

Iron Enthusiast

Took part in the HIM in courtown today.

Have to say my experience was the same as the above.

I know the weather was shocking but even so, a solid plan B (for no swim) should have existed for this race since the day it was advertised.

So far as I know, roughly the 40 lead HIM runners were all told to go the wrong way by a marshall, resulting in them not running the correct course and therefore all being DNF's? (Could you imagine how they feel)

The organisers didn't have a mega-phone so the hundreds of athletes couldn't be briefed properly. This leading to loads of 'gossip' and hear-say about when races were starting and what changes had been made. (Not what you want pre IM or HIM let alone olympic.)


Also a small point but the '93k' bike course was actually '99k' long.

I'm sorry to say it, but if they hadn't decided to run four brand new events, for the very first time, on the same day - there would have been less problems, and the problems that did arise would have been easier to manage.

I really do feel for the organisers as i'm sure they wanted the race to go well. Unfortunately I think it was all just stretched a bit too thin.

At the same time, I'm sure if it had been a glorious day..... things might have been different (good old Mother nature!)

Duffman'05

I got out of there pretty soon after I finished the Sprint; but I thought there was something funny going on when I saw many a puzzled cyclist/runner stopped on the road.... Between all of this and the lack of swimming (not necessarily their fault) - A bit of a shambles I'll agree

Did even the kids race work out as planned??:rolleyes:

Anyone know when/where the full results will be posted?

n-dawg

Just back home from eireman. I think this course has huge potential but unfortunately it was not realised today. I had some big problems

1) It was annoying that the swim was canceled but there was nothing that could be done. What annoyed me was initially we were told that the race would be delayed by 45 min so that the Ironman competitors could be started. But when we eventually started it was nearly 1hr45min late. This threw off my eating plan quite a bit and I was starving by half way through the bike. Also initally we were told that the start run would be 8km. but 2 min before the start this was changed to 4km!!! A bit too late notice for nutritional plans

2) Transition between the 1st run and cycle was badly planned.... The bikes leaving had to cross the runners coming in. I had to swerve to miss a runner and think I gave them a massive shock.

3) Was sent the wrong way on the run. This was a problem that could have easily been sorted if somebody made sure that everybody went the same way as myself and the other top 40 - 50 runners. But other runners were sent the correct route so that ALL of the top 40-50 will have to be DNFs... Also no note was taken of who went the right or wrong way. So who actually won???? If I was the 1st runner to cover the correct route I would be demanding my prize money :rolleyes:

I hope Eoin addresses these problems for next years race but I myself will be staying away.

locteau

Hi Guys,

I am reading your comments for this event, It is a pity that things went wrong, but organising a big event is very difficult, and obviously you all pointed out what need to be reviewed. I do feel bad for the race organisers whose intentions were genuinely toward developing the sport.

I would not like to be in their shoes tonight, but what I would like to see as a community is to help them and keep their moral up for next year. It would be sad to see such a great initiative to disappear. I am sure they know tonight how some of you feel about it, but again sometimes you need to get a hit to stand up and make the standard higher, I would hope that it will happen next year.

I do understand the athletes disappointment, especially when you have trained hard for this but I would say in a few years time you might be laughing at this in a pub saying " I was there and we...." on the other hand I am sure that most marshals in this event never saw a triathlon before it is like taking part in a triathlon the first time, you are briefed, trained, but still lost in where to go and if you will be able finish it.

I just want to bring some happy thoughts into this, as an athlete, coach and organiser, I am not sure which side is the best to be from time to time.

Reager

I have arrived home from HIM. Agree with comments so far:

- Lack of marshalls, marshalls didn't seem to know course, no distance markers.
- Not a bottle of water (let alone any food) at finish line.
- Lack of communication - website hasn't been updated for a while.
- No timing chip mats at turnaround points on bike or run (as promised in race briefing)

Feel sorry for all the participants that came over from UK etc. to witness this event.

savaloy

Tis a real shame. You can't rely on the weather and cancelling the swim must have been the right thing to do in terms of safety. Still a gutter for all involved

This was/is an ambitious project and I hope that any organisational issues can be resolved so that going forward it will still attract support. Am I right in thinking that the original plan was just for a middle distance and long distance race and that the sprint/olympic were added at a later date? If so, I wonder whether it might be sensible in the future to split the races over either different (a) weekends (b) days?

Abhainn

I too feel gutted for Eoin and crew. Im sure many many hours of work was put in arranging this event.
Unfortunately they seemed to have only two plans thought out. A plan C without a swim was dervived at the last minute but it was never going to make all happy.
And then that minor accident that delayed the start also.

I also think it was a very bad idea arranging 4 races at the same time and ensuring all would be ok. Madness.
I made the bike out at just under 97k, ya that was tough.
And finally I was one of those that only ran well what I made out to be 16k. I was greatly peed off because of that, but never mind.
They'll be days like this.....

trinewbie

Iron Enthusiast wrote: »

So far as I know, roughly the 40 lead HIM runners were all told to go the wrong way by a marshall, resulting in them not running the correct course and therefore all being DNF's? (Could you imagine how they feel)

There will be war if I along with the 40 or so other get DNF'd for this

Today was a farse. Organisation was terrible. The Eireman X race had marshalling problems, the leaders getting sent the wrong way etc, same story today. Its very irritating when organisers dont learn lessons from previous mistakes, It is the organisers responsibility to adequatly brief the marshalls so they know what they are doing. It was evident that this just did not happen. I was fuming in the Eirman X race when I got sent wrong. . I approached Eoin when I crossed the finish line, after realising that we all were sent wring( I was around 10th in HIM - Having been sent wrong on the run, ) and told him one of his marshalls was directing the HIM lads on a shorter route. The smart thing to do would have been to make everyone run the same (albeit shorter) route, so at least there would be consistencies in run times and not a rake of DNFs. But, low and behold they then copped on and sent the rest of the field out on the course in the right direction. ...There were a lot of p!ssed of people in Courtown today.

boomdocker

Results?