Kevin O'Riordan

14 July, 2009

Circuit of Glenmacnass: 19km of distance with 1040m of climb through open mountain terrain. That's as short as it gets if you can see where you're going :)

This was my first long weekend race in a while and one of the first things you notice is how small and relaxed the whole affair is compared to the busier weekday runs. Even the Lugnacoille race two weeks had close to a hundred runners. Nice to have a smaller race every once and a while.

What made this race so interesting was the huge potential for mistakes due to the visibility conditions on the day, which completely changed the state of the field. Adding the element of huge time savings and losses being made due to navigational errors, silly, forgiveable or otherwise meant this race was won as much in the head as it was in the legs. The only strategy was perseverance and not letting oneself become disheartened in the face of mistakes.

The first silly mistake I made was en route from Brockagh East to Brockagh West. Despite it being clearly marked on the map to take the left path at the fork, I was hesitant to trust the map (it's not unusual to find unmarked paths and junctions) and thought the left path looked like it dropped too much height and the right path seemed to venture more towards the centre of the ridge. I followed the path to the right, taking a few people astray with me, before realising my mistake and scrambling back across the heather to meet the rest of the field galloping along the path towards Brockagh East.

I arrived on Brockagh East about the same time as Hugh Cashell and Paul Smyth. After a few moments hesitation with bearings, with Paul initially heading off in the wrong direction, we arrived at the 548m spot height without much issue. However, in the heat of things we forgot to take a new bearing at this point and ended up continuing on through the marsh towards the pond marked at 490m on the map. At this point, the group consisted of myself, Eoin Syron, Hugh Cashell, Fergal Buckley and a certain nameless runner who seemed to be without a map. I'm sure he would later come to regret this. After a brief conferring session (with Fergal cursing the lack of good his prior recce was doing him), we decided we needed to be much further left than we were. With a spot of luck, the mist briefly cleared and we could see the ridge leading to Tonelagee. We climbed up onto the ridge where we met Brendan Lawlor and Ercus Stewart on their way to Tonelagee. After pausing for a while to debate whether they were headed in the right direction, we made our way along the path towards the mountain. In another stroke of luck, the mist cleared briefly and we could see the steep slope of Tonelagee letting us know what direction to head. We could also see Paul Smyth, Brendan Lawlor and Ercus Stewart ahead at this point who appeared to have gone too far into the valley on the right and were now climbing back out. At this stage, our group was down to myself, Hugh Cashell and Fergal Buckley. Eoin Syron had made a better route choice getting back to the ridge and the mapless runner had disappeared back in the direction of Brockagh last time we saw him. The steep ascent provided us with welcome assurance that we were on the right track. Hugh and I arrived at the summit together with Brendan and Ercus following not too far behind.

Coming down off Tonelagee was no less confusing. Hugh and I missed the path coming down off Tonelagee towards the car park. At one point, we were called back by the sound of Brendan/Ercus's whistle after it appeared that we were going too far left. After much arguing about whether to trust our instincts or Brendan and Ercus's, we decided to descend another bit before hitting the point where the slope levelled off. At this point, we decided to contour around until we came across the hilltop between Tonelagee peak and the car park. As we arrived, we could see Niamh O'Ceallaigh and Joe Lalor sprinting across the path that had come down off the mountain, which was a welcome sight. We joined up with them on the path and began our run towards the car park. On the way down, Hugh managed to miss where the path veered a little to the right and skewed off to the left. That was the last I would see of him. I heard afterwards that he unfortunately managed to twist his ankle and had to retire at the waterfall car park. Making my descent down the hill, I managed to overtake Niamh and several other runners. However, I made a bad route decision just coming into the car park and Niamh managed to regain her lead on me. Getting across the river, Niamh opted for the waist deep route while I opted for the ankle deep route.

After welcome refreshments at the car park, it was time to tackle Scarr. Had a bit of trouble finding where the path started, however Niamh kindly directed me to where it began. Followed the path up along (requiring an additional course correction from Niamh as a I followed a sheep track instead of the actual path for a bit). Missed another path coming up to Scarr as I ventured too far left, ended up traipsing through the heather, encountering some confusing false summits before finally hitting the path heading North-South towards Scarr. On the way I met another runner who had dropped too far into the valley and was returning from climbing out. The rendez-vous was a brief one as he was in a fresher condition than me and took off quickly. Descending off Scarr was an eerie experience, having shared the route with 200 runners just a few weeks previously and now finding myself racing down on my own. I could just about see runners in the distance, however they were too far ahead for me to have any hope of catching them. I wasn't totally alone though. I met some walkers on the run home and one runner coming in the opposite direction towards me. "Curse him if he's a finisher doing a cool-down come to torment me", I thought to myself. Turned out to be just someone out for a random jog enjoying the hills though. He asked me if it as an IMRA race as we passed, which I confirmed.

I gained an unexpected place coming towards the stile near the end, courtesy of an unfortunate runner and his salt-loss induced cramps. I reached the finish to find Eoin Syron finished one place ahead of me, having gained his revenge for me finishing one place ahead of him at the Mourne way half marathon a few weeks previously.

All in all, this was possibly the most enjoyable race of the year for me. Thanks to all my brief travelling companions for keeping the spirits up. Will certainly be doing the race again next year, not sure if it'll be as much fun if the mist doesn't return. Until then, roll on the navigational challenges.