ITERA 2016 - If you are easily strayed, look away now!!

Enduro

career move wrote: »

Godzone will likely be favourites for the win but Swecco, Issy adventure, team endurance life and the Irish teams will all give them a good run for it!

Great summary of the likely racing situation in your post. The above line is the only one I'd differ on. I'd say Godzone will win by a huge margin.

Enduro

joey100 wrote: »

50km and 75km of kayaking is huge, the liffey descent, a pretty long race is around 20km and that's downstream and is still a bit of a slog, top lads doing it in around 2hrs with a good flow behind them for the majority. I hope your in Double sea kayaks for that, I wouldn't fancy that on a sit on top. Comfort is going to be key for that, that's going to be a long time in the boat. TBH, I'm fairly shocked at that distance, that's a huge undertaking! Fair play!

That's proper AR. Distances are huge accross the board. This race is nicely balanced in that the kayaking takes up at least its fair share of the race time. SOTs will be a huge PITA, but its the same for everyone. A bit of an equaliser, as its much harder to build huge time distances in such pigs of boats (and kayaking tends to be the hardest discipline to build gaps on anyway). Will be hell for anyone who hasn't nailed down an efficient forward paddling stroke. That's where the long hours of technique practice will make the difference. Comfort is only possible with efficiency over those distances.

I've have my own guess at where the route will take us. I forsee a lot of sea paddling in the SOTs, which makes the race hostage to the weather. We'll see what happens. Last paddles should be an easy guess (lake/river), and will probably be in Canadians.

I'm hoping that the portage in the second kayak (lake -> river -> sea for that one is my guess) will take us right past one of the best chippers in Ireland, hopefully when it is open. We'll see!

Neady83

Enduro wrote: »

I'm hoping that the portage in the second kayak (lake -> river -> sea for that one is my guess) will take us right past one of the best chippers in Ireland, hopefully when it is open. We'll see!

It closes at 10pm but there's an even better chipper around the corner from it that stays open very late I think there's a few of us thinking of the same route.

mossym

come on guys, you are trying to give the idea this is tough but the main concern is stopping at the chipper?

Neady83

mossym wrote: »

come on guys, you are trying to give the idea this is tough but the main concern is stopping at the chipper?

My two most vivid memories from last year AR are:

1. pushing that blinking bike up mountains
2. crying when we asked the locals if there was a chipper in a little village that we passed through on the second night and there wasn't

Don't underestimate the power of chips when all you've eaten for 48 hours is salami, flapjacks, sweets and tuks

joey100

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

Neady83

joey100 wrote: »

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

Things that will make it easier:

1. We'll be sitting down for a large portion of the first day
2. When we've covered 50km with 5,000m on our feet we'll happily sit into our kayaks again
3. The prospect of chips close to the end of the 75km paddle will motivate us to keep going
3. The last 20km paddle will take us home so we'll keep on chugging at that stage

The thing that will keep me going. Team ARSE (me included) did circa 41km in the Beast last year without back rests (rookie AR mistake) so I will think back to that torturous time when I'm hurting.

I hear you though, it's a lot of kayaking in the first two days and will be tough at night but all we can do is keep moving as best we can and Ivan did warn us earlier in the year that there would in excess of 120km of paddling.

Enduro

Neady83 wrote: »

It closes at 10pm but there's an even better chipper around the corner from it that stays open very late I think there's a few of us thinking of the same route.

I'll have to interrogate you for chipper knowledge once we know the race route

Enduro

joey100 wrote: »

I'm still getting my head around the kayaking distance's and in sit on tops. I get that this is a proper adventure race and the distances are huge and it is over a few days but that's a serious amount of time in the boat.

I'm not trying to frighten people or scare them, just my own head trying to work it out by relating it to kayaking races I know about! The devizes to westminster kayaking race, a fairly well contested race and one of the sort of ultra marathon races in kayking is around 200km long. The average time for a 2 man K2, a boat made for racing is around 23 hours. It's around 50km longer than you will be doing and has a good few portages too so will be a bit slower because of that. A good Irish team (I think you probably know them too Enduro) were around 21hrs last year at it. To kayak 150km in a 2 person sit on top is a huge task. Especially if you compare it to this. I think I'm still in shock! But yous have all been working towards this and I have no doubt you will all do it and get through. It's just the first time in any adventure race I have seen anything like that in kayaking distance.

You're absolutely spot on. It's a serious amount of time in any boat, never mind the those piggish SOTs! You don't need to worry about frightening or scarying anyone. We're perfectly capable of doing that for ourselves

It's definitely a massively ambitious ask for SOTs. I've done huge kayaking legs in ARs before, but I think this is likely to be the longest time on SOTs for me anyway. Most of the big kayaking legs I've done before have been in 2SKs. It could actually be worse though. Trying to control a blow up canoe on a rough enough Tasman sea for 5 or 6 hours was "interesting"! We were looking jealously at our teammates in the SOT (The jealousy was reversed on an 18 hour river paddle though... the blow up canoe had the fun characteristics of rafting in the rapids). Even worse was taking over teammate's blow up because they had punctured the middle section. So put the 2 best paddlers in the crocked boat and piloted the fecker for 2-3 hours down a tricky shallow river to the stage end. Ah memories... more to be created soon.

Neady83

Enduro wrote: »

I'll have to interrogate you for chipper knowledge once we know the race route

I'll happily give you my recommendations I know a place that does a great deep fried mars bar, in fact, they'll deep fry just about anything that you give them

Enduro

Neady83 wrote: »

I'll happily give you my recommendations I know a place that does a great deep fried mars bar, in fact, they'll deep fry just about anything that you give them

Oh feck! And I was planning to loose weight during the race

shotgunmcos

Deep fried Mars bars.. yuck!
But salty vinegary chips .... nom nom nom

career move

Enduro wrote: »

career move wrote: »

Godzone will likely be favourites for the win but Swecco, Issy adventure, team endurance life and the Irish teams will all give them a good run for it!

Great summary of the likely racing situation in your post. The above line is the only one I'd differ on. I'd say Godzone will win by a huge margin.

Odds on favourites get beaten too

Neady83

Linky to live tracking: http://www.itera.ie/live/

From this side of the world we have:

Shotgunmcos (back from injury), Career Movie and Sconhome from team #TriHarderAR (Team 34)
Enduro from Team Columbia Ireland (Team 6)
Néady from Team ARSE (Team 29)

I'm sure I've left someone out so apologies if I have .... please feel free to edit and add

Dilbert75

Jeez is there nothing will keep Team Triharder (with or without #) down? Team anthem will have to be Chumba Wumba, or whatever they're called.

Enjoy it every one of you. The hard work is done - go do your thing. And precisely commit every detail to memory for the race reports afterwards (yeah right).

pgibbo

Best of luck folks. Can't wait to hear how it goes for you all. :cool:

mossym

best of luck to all taking part, epic looking event, i'm sure you will have an absolute blast

snailsong

Got down to the Point today to see them off in the kayaks. Was surprised to hear that they expected to kayak to Killary in about 5 hours in SOT kayaks. I work at sea and know that coast quite well, around Roonagh is snotty at the best if times so that projection seemed optimistic at best. Had a brief word with Neady and off they went. Following the trackers ever since. It seems the water safety people decided they should all come ashore at Roonagh, about half way, and trek from there. Deteriorating conditions and fading light.
Unfortunately the tracker for Neady's team hasn't responded since 6 o'clock. At that time they were at the back, half way out the bay. Hopefully it's just a tracker issue and they're safely on the trek south. Anybody know anything?

Dilbert75

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.

Firedance

Dilbert75 wrote: »

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.

I was wondering what the story was too. Hopefully all OK, that trip looked bonkers on the map especially knowing the weather was worse in the west

Dilbert75

CMs team Tri-Harder back on the water, according to their FB.

Sleepmonsters reporting that one team (not Neady's) had a hole in their boat!:eek: Squeaky-buns kind of an occurrence.

snailsong

Firedance wrote: »

Dilbert75 wrote: »

Nope - dot-watching too and hoping the same.

I was wondering what the story was too. Hopefully all OK, that trip looked bonkers on the map especially knowing the weather was worse in the west

The weather was about as good as it gets today, apart from the rain. It was only force 3 or so. It was still a tall order in those kayaks. You wouldn't want to try it in actual bad weather. Looking forward to the reports.

Dilbert75

snailsong wrote: »

Unfortunately the tracker for Neady's team hasn't responded since 6 o'clock. At that time they were at the back, half way out the bay. Hopefully it's just a tracker issue and they're safely on the trek south. Anybody know anything?

The following from the ITERA site this morning (under the "TA1 The Aftermath" header):

... and Frank Nash and Bryan Mathias of team A.R.S.E were also there. Nash told me the dramatic story of their withdrawal from the race yesterday.

We decided to come in to shore on the paddle but got caught in the surf near some cliffs and got into difficulty. First the girls fell in, then in trying to right them we all ended up in the water getting thrown around below the rocks. I ended up hanging on to one of the boats and the bags, then the paddles fell in and I grabbed those, but in the end Bryan just shouted to me to let it all go and get myself out. It was still a wet and committing climb out as a slip would have taken us back into the water. Then we saw the other boat fall back in and Sinead on the shore with blood all over her white bib from bashing her head in a fall.”

The team pushed the rescue button on their tracker and got help from a house nearby and assistance was there in minutes from the race, coastguard and ambulance service, taking Sinead Keogh off to hospital to be checked out and looked after....

Oh I'm SO gutted for them all - and obviously particularly concerned for Neady... It sounds like the two lads are continuing as non-comp but I'm sure it won't be the same. They sound like such a good team.

Firedance

Dilbert75 wrote: »

The following from the ITERA site this morning (under the "TA1 The Aftermath" header):


Oh I'm SO gutted for them all - and obviously particularly concerned for Neady... It sounds like the two lads are continuing as non-comp but I'm sure it won't be the same. They sound like such a good team.

Oh my god, Neady I hope you're ok, oh no..that's awful

Dilbert75

Dilbert75 wrote: »

It sounds like the two lads are continuing as non-comp but I'm sure it won't be the same. They sound like such a good team.

I read further:

Nash and Mathias were looking to move forward on the course and then were co-opted as marshals to go and redirect teams on the next trekking stage. This had already been shortened by taking out CP5, but the decision was made this morning to also remove CP4 as well because the leading teams are moving more slowly than expected.

snailsong

Terrible news. I hope they're ok.
I'm guessing they were already heading in with a view to coming ashore? The wind wasn't very strong yesterday but coming from the North so that shore would be treacherous.

Re cutting the course short.
Apart from the rain the weather wasn't too bad as these things go. What did the organisers expect?. I spoke to some members of the local coast guard at the start and we were surprised at the paddle they had planned, to say the least.

Firedance

Here's a video of the first leg and the deteriorating conditions https://youtu.be/bAv8CXN84vQ

gavkm27

Tomorrow crossing Galway bay is going to be really tough F5/6 SE winds (head on) combined with big tides .9m - 4.90m

lgk

gavkm27 wrote: »

Tomorrow crossing Galway bay is going to be really tough F5/6 SE winds (head on) combined with big tides .9m - 4.90m

That was cancelled a little earlier. They'll be getting on the bikes at the end of the lough paddle, to make an already long bike section even longer.

gavkm27

lgk wrote: »

That was cancelled a little earlier. They'll be getting on the bikes at the end of the lough paddle, to make an already long bike section even longer.

Cool thats good news! Do you know where the checkpoint will be? Just watching the tracker now and the French team can't find the opening to the corrib,it's about 20m wide and very hard to find in normal daylight