Runners World Holland Article WW Relay 2017
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| Jason Kehoe | May 11 2018, 11:17pm | Last year 'Runner's World Holland' sent a reporter to follow the Wicklow Way Relay. We didn't have any Dutch entries this year afaik though. I have translated with Google and interpreted where it didn't make sense. He really caught the essence of the day. Reporter: Wiep Idzenga A relay trail run of eight stages over 100 kilometres through 'the garden of Ireland', that is the Wicklow Way Relay. The swagger with which the Irish rebels come from these mountains fought the British, lives on in the free character of the contest and the mutual humour of the Attendees. "Yeah, just take it easy, it's only a race." It is about ten o'clock on Saturday morning. At the change point at the bottom of Djouce Mountain (727 meters) panic arose in the team from ‘The Gap Trail Runners’. According to the schedule it would be their second runner of the day, Andy Stafford, already at least twenty minutes outside the schedule. Emily O'Conner has her warm-up ceased. She now nervously flips back and forth between the point where the runners from other teams and the fence where she will relieve her teammate in this rugged relay run of some 100 kilometres and 3500 altitude meters. Where is Andy? Is he lost? Injured? Even worse? The moment they search for a telephone signal Emily wants to put on her long pants and jacket again, there is a scream. "There he is!”. Here, at Lough Tay, an hour's drive from Dublin, the view is spectacular. Rounded peaks with heathland that merge and flow into each other. In between the troughs formed by glaciers many shades of green and the sharp yellow of the gambling thorn. Pine forests around Lough Tay, the lake that just like a lot of land around, it is owned by the beer brewing family Guinness. Andy has no eye for all that beauty. He concern is located on the narrow and stretched railway sleepers who raised it over the muddy peat bog to form a path. Despite a torn eyebrow, two knees torn open and a right leg where he barely can stand, he tries to get down as fast as possible. He does not want his seven teammates to fail today to get a good result in the sixteenth edition of the Wicklow Way Relay. Hopping, half stumbling, he finally reaches Emily according to the rules of this relay with a handkerchief on the wound. 'What a man, what a man" someone says. It is a compliment. Andy's torture is coming to an end. On his leg, a piece of 15 kilometres with more than 600 vertical meters through the woods, along the lakes and over the tops of the Wicklow Mountains, he crashed after a quarter of an hour on a path with rock boulders. "Stupid, stupid, fecking stupid," the Irishman shouts with his pony-tail and savage beard. Made of wiped wipes, water and he does not want to know anything else. He, mountain man and nature man, who tried as much as possible to avoid running on asphalt, just needed to better look out from under his cap. Someone asks if he thought of giving up, Andy or he looks like a Marmot, sees a violin playing. Cursing, he shakes his head. He is disappointed by the loss of time; the pain in the head and legs does not interest him. He is not the only one. The man who came in something like more than an hour earlier was the fastest runner (Des Kennedy), did so with his left forearm in plaster. There is no one today whining about the strong wind, the pouring rain with which the day began, or the thorns that scratch deep in the legs. IRISH HUMOR Not far from the spot where Andy massaged his aching leg is a small memorial against a boulder. 'To the memory of J.B. Malone, pioneer of the Wicklow Way" it says on a semicircle of stone. The Irish army cartographer was an avid walker. He called the Wicklow Mountains, 'the garden of Ireland' - unlike many Irish landscapes, not rocky and bare, but full of bushes and trees. Hamlets with coloured houses carry names like Coolboy, Ballinaclash, Knockananna and Woodenbridge. Malone discovered one long zipper like path of amazing hiking trails that he add up to 127 kilometers merged and promoted as the Wicklow Way. Years later, someone thought that distance was fine too to form a path. It became a relay race for teams and at the same time a fundraiser for Irish junior mountain runners on foreign trips. For parking problems on the narrow roads they avoid a number of points, and it remains a small-scale event with a maximum of 30-35 teams. The route has recently become a reality as a solo event once a year, as an ultramarathon. In the car on the way to the end of leg 3, says Pól Ó Murchú, the president of the Irish Mountain Running Association (IMRA), that he because part of the group feeling this event actually looks better. 'Running is lonely. Today you see that everyone bites through the pain, harder than they run normally. Healthy group pressure. You want your team to not be disappointed. That's why the injured ran Andy through. He had to and would finish. "Normally Pól also participates with his own team, ‘All The President's Men’, but after a fall with the mountain bike he can barely walk. Later with his leg hobbling along past waiting participants, he hears that one man is not made to sit on a bicycle. Pól smiles, but if he was one of them later that day by car passes, he calls through the window 'wanna lift?' and gives smiling gas. The Wicklow Way Relay is for some teams one hard, competitive race, but this is Ireland. There is always space for craic, the talent that many Irish possess to everything from the cheerful side. Not surprisingly, craic acts weather. Take the edition of a few years ago, for example imagine, when due to the severe heat runners disoriented turned up staggering from dehydration on farms and dived in the river along the way. That morning at 7 o'clock one starting runner, while it poured rain, that it’ll be 'a grand day between the showers'. Craic is also friends until just before the point that it becomes offensive, hoping for one smart rebuttal. 'Keep in your fat ass,' says a car driver against his skinny teammate if he is on a close path at a switch point and wants to pass. 'Buy a car that does not compensate for anything, 'he gets back. On the way we see runners after a diversion around a felled piece of forest left the asphalt, a farm lane on that they have to share with sheep. Then the path quickly runs steeply up through a next forest, past a waterfall. It's alright along rivers and through stretches of moorland. A hill in the distance in the clouds. There is no meter flat. The field, after three and a half hour of running is already completely disintegrated. Runners are especially on the lookout along on the route marked; there are black poles with a pictured yellow man with a backpack and walking stick. The runners are lucky that the fog of the past days has gone and the rain has stopped. Also with it romantic grazing light that now shines on the hills, it is the speed and the effort difficult enough the right follow path. After three legs the race seemed to have a time difference of many minutes already struggled, but there are already teams lost more than twenty minutes on the road to get lost. That can happen to the others. The runner-up from last year, team Rathfarnham AC, runs through a big detour with their second runner now in ninth place. The man who went wrong has gone home disappointed and returns that day no longer back. That is unusual with the Wicklow Way Relay. Team members take each other off and pick each other up at the next switch, encourage and take care of food and drink. Sometimes, after their own course, they arrange the times or record the transit times. WHAT RULES At Glendalough, 'valley of the two lakes', pass the runners remnants of a monastic order from the sixth century: one round tower, a gate, crumbled churches and a catholic drail. They are one of the oldest Christian relics in Europe. After almost 50 kilometres with thorns, loose stones, gusts, rain, soggy surface and roomy 1600 altitude meters, the participants come here new obstacles against: selfie sticks, cameras and large bags. The Saturday morning and the monastery is full of tourists. Andrew Hanney (43), IT Director at a large bank, is coming, there is a loud call for him to make way through it the crowd. The born Northern Dubliner with his red beard even fulminates against unsuspecting holiday gangsters who move neatly next to the path. It will be the benign team captain of The Kilcoolers, from the nearby Kilcoole, not charged. It is his and their first participation. Weeks training and preparation must to come out right now. Hanney, who has been running for three years, has the terrain and distances in detail studied. He and his team members have several weekends in the Wicklow Mountains spent to explore the various pieces needed. The organization recommends such a recce (reconnaissance, military reconnaissance) strongly- you have to run it before you race it. You can get lost in bad weather and it can be dangerous. Moreover, everyone recalls the team from Cork that lost so much time when in a well winning position looking for the right path that it is with difficulty and ended fourth. With all information from the exploratory tours and the abilities of being teammates laid Kilcoolers team-captain Hanney the logistical puzzle. The cars and the right people on the right place, not too early but also certainly not too late. If Hanney during his own run a little later his lungs slightly back in his chest and has in a nice cadence looks over the Lower Lake from Glendalough he knows that his experienced brother Mick has not exaggerated: the Wicklow Way Relay is addictive. Andy Stafford does not have the blood on his knees yet his face swept when he talks to Glendalough finished teammate. It is more than three hours after his fall despite a vague smile he is still not with himself the clean. "How could I be so fecking stupid?" He gets a slap on the shoulder from a marshall that checks afterwards whether a departing participant does have a rain jacket with him. It's after a case of hypothermia in the past one of the few obligations imposed by the organization. To go further it is very Irish. There are some rules - two women and one master (40+) in a team of eight for example - 'but, basically you can do whatever you want, 'says IMRA president Pól Ó Murchú. 'We assume a certain degree of honesty.' There are no checkpoints and no one carries a chip. Just call out the number of your team upon entry to the handover. It becomes a laugh, as they switch, the departing runner tells the finish man that the keys are in the tracksuit top and that in it the car is still enough food to eat: "Do not hold back." the incoming man shouts. In Drumgoff, where Leg 5 turns into Leg 6, Pól Ó Murchú points to a skinny man who is at a crossroads doing traffic marshalling. That's Paul Mahon, the guy who brought multi-sports to Ireland. He should be shot." Mahon laughs and does a dance. The former engineer saw many in England (combined) endurance sports events and wondered why so little was organized in Ireland. The answer could be 'The Troubles'. Although it ethnic-nationalist conflict mainly occurred in Northern Ireland it also regularly regulated the Republic of Ireland with violent outbursts. It was in the seventies and racing is not recommended in a short pants and a shirt over the military roads and the hills to run. The battle between the nationalists and loyalists delayed development of endurance sports in Ireland. In Drumgoff, at the end of the Glenmalure valley against the English in the 16th century Irish rebels fought, shows how small and the shelf of long-distance runners. We know us. Lillian Deegan was the first woman to run the Wild Atlantic Way (2700) kilometres along the Irish west coast). She did it in 47 days. Back injured from the Marathon des Sables Morocco - 'I hate the sand, love the green hills' - today she is a handover marshal. The Irish marathon runner (2.36) and winner of the European Championships in 2012 Linda Byrne runs today the last 10 kilometres before Hurt Squad. She is on her leg not even the fastest, Laura Shaughnessy defeats her 36.57, and at the same time defeats all other men and women. Most athletes also try to follow Jason Dowling, a former participant and ultra-runner who just ran the Wicklow Round today solo. He has a 24-hour time to all 26 hill peaks in this area, more than 100 kilometres with 6,000 vertical meters. In Drumgoff he crosses the Wicklow Way Relay. There are encouraging words from experiential experts Ó’Murchú and Kilcooler Liam Vines. They already walked around the round in time. All encouragements come for Dowling too late. It has been beautiful, un-Irish weather for two weeks, but just tonight, at the start of his attempt at the 24th to be the one that completes the round within the time, all hell broke loose. Squalls and torrents almost blew Dowling from the start. He got lost regularly and is already lying far behind schedule. Ten kilometres later, he will give up the battle. Now he fiercely fires the waste from his pockets to the floor of his father's van. Dowling crammed bananas inwards, spoon cups of yogurt empty and sets a new world record of using f-words. "I'm fucking hoping that from fucking now on the fucking wind is fucking at me back." He is not a stranger to swear words. If Jason asks Dowling sr. 'What time it is', he answers that: 'It's fucking time to go.' Dowling has left but there is still hilarity at the waiting athletes in Drumgoff. Cedric Martin, a Frenchman who has run for 'Fast Fingers', the team of his Croatian girlfriend, is much faster than expected. (Please note the two are not the only foreigners, there are also one in Ireland living and working Malian.) Martin comes down the hill rushing around the corner towards the next runner who is not ready yet. A moment later he rolls out of a car and still has to change into his running clothes, there is a lot of comment. 'Yeah, just take it easy, it's only a race,' is the mildest variant. Ten minutes later, it is also in the same place cheerfulness at the traditional mass start. The first team has already passed over two hours earlier as the sixth runners of the teams of which the fifth runner is not yet inside can also start. In the past, some people sometimes finished teams in the dark, when the rest was already home. In a few other competitions would be these runners at the restart Crashes are seen at the Wicklow Way Relay they are welcomed as heroes. One of the applauding spectators is the now dressed and blood-stunned Andy. He must be there now on his second pint or bear for the ground. Three hours later at the award ceremony at a pub in Shillelagh all tables are full of big glasses of stout and lager. Guinness is good for you, even after a long trail run. The last runner from winner Trinity Track Racers is already more than two hours inside the next team, the team finished with an average of exactly 14 kilometres per hour. On the entire women's team ‘Agony or Defeet’ it is another hour and waiting for 45 minutes. Which they have ended up in the back of the field, but they do not mind. The weeks of preparation have been fantastic for their friendship and 'oh my, god' it’s the Wicklow Mountains that keep them going. In addition, one of them remarks they are the only team that has not gone wrong. 'So, what about "women can read maps"? Sláinte! |
