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Friday, September 10 2010 @ 11:53 AM GMT Daylight Time

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Beast of the East write up

Beast of the East write up

Mark Dunleavy

Registered: 11/06/06
Posts: 6

Sunday, July 20 2008 @ 11:04 PM GMT Daylight Time

I met Fernando before things started and he said he liked hills. The organisers certainly liked hills as well. I don’t like hills. So it proved to be definitely Fernando’s day and definitely not my day as I found it to be the toughest Olympic distance tri I have done to date (that includes Hell of the West and a couple of meaner ones I did when we were living in the UK).

Wicklow Tri has found a brilliant new location for their event and it is a wonder why another club hadn’t beaten them to it. It is located up a back road north of Laragh, or a little south of Sally Gap. Parking, registering and setting up in transition were very easy. When Wicklow Tri was running their event in Bray they had more people racing than today. I reckon there were about 200 or so people there, which made it very relaxed, punctual and friendly.

The swim was in Lough Dan and surprisingly there was significant chop, mainly because of the wind. Given that this was a fresh water swim, I was expecting it to be cold, but it was fine. Visibility was bad as the water was full of sediment. Now I need to see the overall results, but I thought leaving the water I would have been close to a characteristic 32-33 mins, but it was around 38 mins! I heard that Fernando was around 25 mins, so obviously the choppy conditions were slowing us down.

The bike greeted us with a sadistic 2 km climb designed specifically to make me cough up various body organs. Once we crested the hill, the next 30 kms were undulating and in-the-tri bars. It was a little hillier than Athy, but still ideal for triathlon. It was an open-road event, but the traffic was very light.

The last 10 kms were savage though. Imagine over 5 kms of that drag at the end of the Hell of the West or steeper version of the climb we do on our own Naas duathlon from Beggars End to the turn around point outside Blessington. I saw my average speed go from 29.9 kms to 25.7 kms in those final 10 kms.

I was well and truly blitzed coming off the bike and then faced running up that fecking 2 km hill again. Meanwhile, the flying Fernando was gliding home to a well-earned victory.

The run levelled out to fairly normal peaks-and-troughs terrain, so it was about then I found my legs. Like the bike, I personally found this run a lot tougher than Hell of the West, but it would probably appeal to the greyhounds and mountain goats amongst us.

All in it was a wonderful triathlon. For mere mortals, it is not an event to flatter like Athy or Athlone. From my perspective, I believe it stands alone in terms of toughness. First-timers to this distance would probably finish it alright, but would leave with the impression that the full tri is tougher than it really is. As I write this, I fully intend to do it again next year, but I will approach it with a great deal more respect and specific hill training.

Finally two big congrats: firstly to Fernando, lover and conquistador of hills and sadistic courses and secondly to Wicklow Tri for organising an excellent and innovative event.

Darren

Registered: 10/15/06
Posts: 127

Monday, July 21 2008 @ 08:00 PM GMT Daylight Time

Well done Mark and great report.

Darren

PS - Will give it a go when i get back from Cyprus

m g dunleavy

Registered: 07/20/08
Posts: 1

Wednesday, July 23 2008 @ 09:19 AM GMT Daylight Time

thanks Darren,

Looking at the results, I see now that were only about 129 people there on the day. It has been a long time since I did a full distance tri with that number of people. No wonder it was so relaxed.

eobrien

Registered: 11/21/06
Posts: 91

Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 12:03 PM GMT Daylight Time

Well done mark

I had a feeling that it would be a b*tch....
Given the area ....

Fair Play to you Smile

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