2013 Art O'Neill Challenge

aigster

Great day , night... Hybrid done... Thought 2 a.m. Would never come...
Really happy as so many hybrids left at one... First trek was slower than I hoped( but I was happy and greatful to be guided)
But at cp2 I was befriended by an experienced runner who let me tag along and really give the last section a lash .... Heading up to cross and plack I feared I made an error... Out came a gel and it did the trick ..my legs were on fire !:))
Well done to all , first or last!!...a great day, and thanks to all on here for the tips:)

PvtPile

Great event yesterday. Well done to all involved. Legs gonna be sore for a few days.

How much did people sleep last night. I slept solid for 13 and half hours.havent done that in about 20 years.

Really thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

aigster

PvtPile wrote: »

Great event yesterday. Well done to all involved. Legs gonna be sore for a few days.

How much did people sleep last night. I slept solid for 13 and half hours.havent done that in about 20 years.

Really thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Did anyone ger official winning times/results

nerraw1111

Results are up; http://www.redtagtiming.com/results/AoN2013_Results.pdf

10 people under 7 hours.

Ar Strae

Savage race. Moved up from Hybrid to Ultra this year and boy did I feel that difference! Fair play to Declan, the moving of CP1 from Kilbride to Ballynultagh Woods made a lot of sense, means you get all the road sections over with before CP1. Also the Athdown detour, which can't be recce'd as it is on private land, was much more clearly marked this time.

Respect to DWMRT and all the volunteers!

We ran out of steam from CP2 onwards and had to barrel down TableTrack to try to get a time starting with 8 rather than 9. My first Ultra so a lot to learn but a good place to learn them! As always the other competitors made it, plenty of banter, especially with a 6 strong gang down from the North running it together. Pints and Full Irish in the Glenmalure Lodge was extremely welcome, as was the hot chocolate on finishing.

Could have done without Don McClean's "American Pie" over the speakers in CP1 though..but at least it encouraged me not to linger! :rolleyes::P

A real tester of a race. Think that's it though for me..a different challenge for next year I reckon :-)

Ronan

Enduro

A classic race as ever. Didn't expect to be competitive this year given that I had run 300 miles less than 2 weeks earlier, so was absolutely delighted to have enough in the tank to lead out the race and hold on for the win.

Conditions from cp2 to the glenmalure valley where the toughest I've encountered so far. At the time I hit it there was no light whatsoever, and the mist was so thick that I couldn't see more than a meter or two. I fell off one or to peat-hags for lack of vision. Pure compass navigation required to get through that section.

Not long before getting to the fireroads in Glenmalure I went sliding down a riverbank, hitting a rock with my leg on the way down. It hurt, but thought nothing much more of at and ran on to the finish. Only when changing out of my running gear did I discover a big hole in my leg :eek: Thanks to the mountain rescue and first aid lads for doing the initial patching up. One of the rescue lads then drove me to Vincents where A&E x-rayed to be sure that there were no fractures and no debris embedded (it was all good and clean), and selotaped it all back together with 7 stitches.

Gutted to have missed the post-race craic in the pub afterwards as a consequence

Aislingtherese

Well done to Declan and all his team. A shout out to the Greenhill scouters at CP2 again ++ and the entire DWMRT crew. There were a lot of generous people out there giving their time to this event at all stages. Tanks, tanks, tanks.

It was tough and (my) running was not pretty, but the afterglow is worth it all! Enduro is right. The conditions from CP2 to Barravore were manky... I kept wanting to punch the next peat hag I saw, but for the fact I couldn't see them. Great crew though in the ultras that we kept bumping into. Mark, Sinead, Stephen, Frank etc... lovely to start to recognise people. May give IMRA a lash this year!

AON2013

Just wanted to say well done to everyone who set out from Dublin Castle and don't try to quantify it by whether or not you reached Barravore. To me this really is an adventure race and no one knows starting out who will complete it. Thankfully most people did but it is the Art O'Neill after all and unfortunately he didn't make it. However corny it sounds I think you're all great and hopefully at least some of you will be back for more next year.

Results are on RedTagTiming and I will post photos as soon as they are sorted.

Outside

We always found navigation pretty simple during our Recce's and joked, "imagine if there was zero viz, ah we'd be grand still, it's pretty straight forward". No such luck! Couldn't believe when we were on our way up to Art's cross in pretty much Zero viz how different things looked. I ended up running with a mate of mine towards the cross and we stuck together. Maps out near the cross wondering what to do next (no cross or three lakes in sight). Then out of the darkness came three Cork lads running the Ultra. "Any idea where we are lads?", their response reassuringly, "we know exactly where we are", pulling out a GPS. Our eyes lit up and we kindly asked permission to tag along for a bit. The five of us ended up chatting all the way down to the finish, we'd still be up there only for them! Great event and very well run. Fingers crossed there will be a next year! Thanks to the three military Cork lads, great to see such comradery.

aigster

Enduro wrote: »

A classic race as ever. Didn't expect to be competitive this year given that I had run 300 miles less than 2 weeks earlier, so was absolutely delighted to have enough in the tank to lead out the race and hold on for the win.

Conditions from cp2 to the glenmalure valley where the toughest I've encountered so far. At the time I hit it there was no light whatsoever, and the mist was so thick that I couldn't see more than a meter or two. I fell off one or to peat-hags for lack of vision. Pure compass navigation required to get through that section.

Not long before getting to the fireroads in Glenmalure I went sliding down a riverbank, hitting a rock with my leg on the way down. It hurt, but thought nothing much more of at and ran on to the finish. Only when changing out of my running gear did I discover a big hole in my leg :eek: Thanks to the mountain rescue and first aid lads for doing the initial patching up. One of the rescue lads then drove me to Vincents where A&E x-rayed to be sure that there were no fractures and no debris embedded (it was all good and clean), and selotaped it all back together with 7 stitches.

Gutted to have missed the post-race craic in the pub afterwards as a consequence

Unfortunately it took me photographic evidence ....of your cut ...to believe you are actually human!... I had my suspicions )

As someone who had never run off road before ...this has been a huge highlight!

Hatcho

Took part as a walker for the second year in a row. Had a much better time of it this year due to better selection of footwear and socks. Last year my feet were already in a bad way at CP1. At CP2 the DWMRT were laying on the Compeeds and I was hopping off the Nurofen!

This year all went much better - feet were sore after the 30km walk but having CP1 at the end of the road section was great as it meant no tramping along tarmac in hiking boots.

Knocked a good 2hrs off last years time and also enjoyed it much more being realitively pain free. Organisers, guides, mountain rescue guys, folks at CP1 and CP2 were all fantastic. And the sense of camaraderie amongst the folks taking part was great as always.

Might do a hybrid hybrid next year with at least some of the 30km being jogged instead of walked. Hats off to the folks who managed to run up those hills - twas tough enough just strolling up them!!:eek:

AON2013

Hello All,

I bet you're all really glad we didn't schedule the AON for the weekend just gone....it would have been a very different event if it went ahead at all so count your lucky stars - I know I am:D

The photos are now available to slowly download from the website and I will work out a way to speed this up. Check the Facebook page for the Flickr link for a faster look at a selection.

Cheers,

Declan

Gravale

Indeed, this is what last weekend was like!

photo 1B (Large).jpg

photo 2A (Large).JPG

photo 3A (Large) (2).JPG

photo 7 A.JPG

Enduro

Now that would have made for an interesting run

loobylou

Enduro wrote: »

Now that would have made for an interesting run

And 200 people following your footsteps:D

Gravale

loobylou wrote: »

And 200 people following your footsteps:D

I think the snow would have covered Enduro's footprints before anyone caught up with them.

Enduro

I've finally finished my race report for this, which can be found here. Bit of long one!

Ar Strae

Great report! Cool to hear how it worked out at the front. I love the description of the stand-off with "Fast Legs"!

Ronan

nerraw1111

Great report. So this brief exchange you had?

ThisRegard

Was wondering that myself, you go, no you go, no you go first, no you go etc.

statss

Yes I'd like to hear more about the exchange. I was thinking you would encounter him again at the finish line and was wondering what would have happened! Very cheeky of him to do what he tried to do.

Enduro

statss wrote: »

Yes I'd like to hear more about the exchange. I was thinking you would encounter him again at the finish line and was wondering what would have happened! Very cheeky of him to do what he tried to do.

I was wondering about how he'd react post-race myself, but unfortunately I was too bust getting my injury treated and I never made it to the Glenmalure Inn.

A bit cheeky of him... maybe, but a legitimate tactic nonetheless. I would guess that he was working on the assumption that the most I would do would be to try to out-run him. Bit of a miscalculation if that was the case! If he had persisted in following me I would happily have taken him on a grand tour of the mountains of Wicklow

I can't remember exactly what the exchange was, but the jist of it was in the blog. Something like...

"You're not going to follow me around the course. I don't want anyone to follow me"
"But you will still win the race, I will not race you"
"I don't care, I just don't want to be followed. I will lead you off course if that's what it takes. You're going to have to do you're own navigation"

I can't remember what else he said, but it was a short conversation! I think he realised the game was up quickly enough (unlike the only other time I ended up doing something similar).

As well as having my own reasons (wanting to run the wilderness without someone following me), I also didn't want to see him benifit from my navigation over the other runners who were doing their own navigation. Navigation and routefinding skills should get their reward!

Outside

Great read Enduro, nice report!

I suppose it really comes down to what people see the Art O'Neill Challenge as. Is it an Ultra Run or Ultra-orienteering event? If it's an orienteering event then they should have made navigation equipment mandatory. They did not so I suppose using other people's torches as your navigation tool isn't against the rules.

Is the general consensus it's an orienteering or running event?

Enduro

Oh it's absolutely not against the rules. It's just a very bad idea (You have to be 100% sure that the person you are following (a) is definitely going where you want to go and (b) is at least as good or preferably better than you at finding their way there and (c) you can actually follow them and not be fecked if you loose track of them. And that's just the start!)

A compass or GPS was mandatory gear, so navigation equipment was madatory.

Most Ultra trail races have some element of personal navigation involved, even if it is following particular paths or markers. It's definitely a running event, but one which requires a high degree of self sufficiency. The course is known in advance, and recommended routes are circulated, so in no way could it be considered an orienteering event.

Outside

Sorry, maybe it's a mistake on their website or there is something wrong with my browser: http://www.artoneillchallenge.ie/gear.html
"Maps of the route"
"GPS and/or compass"
Neither of these have the "*" which "denotes Mandatory Kit which must be included"

The whistle is mandatory though!

Personally I had a map and compass, I wouldn't have been comfortable without it. Trying to use it in ~5m visability was an event in itself!

Enduro

Outside wrote: »

Sorry, maybe it's a mistake on their website or there is something wrong with my browser: http://www.artoneillchallenge.ie/gear.html
"Maps of the route"
"GPS and/or compass"
Neither of these have the "*" which "denotes Mandatory Kit which must be included"

The whistle is mandatory though!

Personally I had a map and compass, I wouldn't have been comfortable without it. Trying to use it in ~5m visability was an event in itself!

You're right! I mis-read the gear list. There's no way I'd be going onto such a long open-mountain route at night without a compass though (if I was doing my own navigation, obviously enough).

It's highly unlikely anyone could make their way along the course without one or the other in the visibility on the night of the race. I was correcting myself every few meters. It would have been easy to spend the night unkowningly walking around in circles.

fobbzy

On the night I was following a compass bearing from the gap to find the river... generally south..... I came across 3 lads going North this was in zero viz...... " Ok lads one of us is wrong, lets have a look"

It seems they were following a gps.... map and compass in the bag.... I established the grid reference they were navigating to was correct and asked them to demonstrate how they were using the gps. They would stand still and see where the arrow was pointing on the gps, put gps in pocket and then run in that direction. After a while stop again take out gps and repeat. I had to explain they had to be moving while looking at the gps if the arrow they were following was to be pointing in the right direction!!!!! I left them with the advice to take the bearing off the gps if they wanted to still use it and follow that bearing on the compass so at least they would know they weren't going North.......
So map compass and gps may be manditory but knowing how to use them should be lol........
That said great night great race.... off to read Enduro's account now and this "exchange"..........

AON2013

Thanks for the great race report Enduro – just a point of note though - the only reason there wasn't a star to denote 'compulsory' against the map/compass/gps is because we have a guided category so they are not compulsory for everyone, only self guided people. This would have been made pretty clear at the three information nights but I guess that wasn’t enough.

The idea that someone would be daft enough to do a race like AON, in the mountains, at night and not bring the means to navigate never occurred to me but there you go. Lessons learned all round and two brand new stars on the gear list for the ‘It’s a wonder I’m not still out there brigade’ just for good measure. See you all next year!

Gasherbraun

AON2013 wrote: »

Thanks for the great race report Enduro – just a point of note though - the only reason there wasn't a star to denote 'compulsory' against the map/compass/gps is because we have a guided category so they are not compulsory for everyone, only self guided people. This would have been made pretty clear at the three information nights but I guess that wasn’t enough.

The idea that someone would be daft enough to do a race like AON, in the mountains, at night and not bring the means to navigate never occurred to me but there you go. Lessons learned all round and two brand new stars on the gear list for the ‘It’s a wonder I’m not still out there brigade’ just for good measure. See you all next year!

Firstly a belated thanks for a great well organised event.

I see you say ''see you next year'' but was just wondering (as are others I am sure) what the chances are of an event for walkers next year assuming it is not too soon to have an idea. I think I read somewhere that it may end up as just an ultra run in 2014 so is this how you envisage the 2014 AON? Just curious really since I dont want to start looking forward to the organised event if it is really not likely to happen.

Apologies for sticking a walking related question in here....it just seems the only forum that is appropriate

Outside

Ya it makes sense to have the map and compass mandatory, even just the compass would probably suffice but when visibility is down to ~5-10m, doubts start creeping in about what the compass is telling you!

If anyone's interested I have a race report written up here: http://johnnycronin.blogspot.ie/2013/01/art-oneill-challenge-2013.html

Hopefully it'll convey in some way to anyone who hasn't done it before as to what an amazing event it is. Fingers crossed there'll be a next year! Great work AON2013.