I completed my first 24 hour race the other weekend, two 2-man teams, in a mixed mode race, hill running, mountain biking, orienteering and kayaking.
Inveragh Peninsula, on the West coast of Ireland was the race location, the next peninsular down from the race’s usual location, the Dingle Peninsula. The Dingle 24 hour Adventure Race is the culmination of a series of races in June, the DAR mini, the DAR sport the DAR 12h etc. It was a pretty relaxed affair, with a small number of competitors.

We worked as a team of four through most of the stages, I thought that being a 24 hour race there might be a period of 20 minutes or so at some point in the middle where you could “chill out” and sort out your admin, not so – we spent the whole 24 hours racing to make cut-off times, working out best routes, which checkpoints to hit, with good navigation proving to be key to getting an advantage over some of the other teams.
The mountain stage, I would have classed as a good day out in the hills, indeed the weather was remarkably similar to Scotland – 40 + mph winds and visibility at around 20 metres, up and over MacGillycuddy’s Reeks range, including Carrauntoohil, the highest point in Ireland.
We missed the cut-off for the kayaking, made a tactical decision, (which was kind of made for us) to miss the second hills section and really had to go like hell to make it back in time for the 24 hour cut-off point.
The last 3 ½ hours were intense, and kind of the most fun of the whole race, bogs, barbed wire fences and Whin bushes notwithstanding, with a race up and over the hills – a fierce mountain bike descent on the other side and sprint to the end really finishing the race off nicely.

No photos unfortunately, as we only carried one phone per team, and it was sealed to prevent using for navigation.

I learned quite a few things this race.

1. Rolly cigarettes are an outstanding morale boost at 2 in the morning – and you get a strange look at transitions from other competitors
2. I hate moving between the hours of 00:30 and 03:00
3. Snickers are just outstanding energy food
4. When you want to quit – just keep her ticking over while you have a think about it for a while, by the time you’ve made your mind up to quit – you’ll feel like racing again.

My team mates had completed this race last year and left with a sense of unfinished business and a point to prove – hence the revisit this year, well we achieved what we needed to with a 5th and 7th place finish.

The post-race breakfast was pretty good (x 3 for some of us), and the night out in Killarney was great fun – first time ever seeing someone who was thrown out of the pub for dancing like an eejit get physically thrown back in 10 minutes later following an outcry by the singer/guitarist and the crowd inside – Irish mob rule – not ugly, just funny.