Andrea's report from the Coast to Coast Multi-sports Race
July 2010
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Andrea's report from the Coast to Coast Multi-sports Race
July 2010
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| 17-18 July 2010 Coast2Coast: Belles Race Across Ireland How do you cover 313.4km from Enniscrone on the West Coast of Ireland to Newcastle on the East Coast? According to the organisers, the Belles did it by talking their way across! And commented that the girls' vocal chords should have been aching as much as their legs by the time they finished! As the only females entered in the race, whether pair or solo, Taryn and Andrea had to prove that women have great multi-tasking skills! Have fun. Tick. Complete the gruelling event. Tick. Keep in the mix with the men. Tick. ...and so much so that the girls finished 2nd team overall. Ding Dong! The Bikedock Belles and their support crew (ahem, travelling minimal again and making it a one-man job - because we knew one man who could do it all!...Andrea's husband Paddy) drove the kit-laden Bikedock van (complete with the infamous Race Around Ireland bell!) over to Enniscrone, Co Sligo, on Friday evening in time for the 9pm race registration and 10pm race briefing. As ever the trip was full of chatter and laughter. Even the weather deteriorating as we headed West did not dampen our spirits. I mean, how could you not be excited about travelling from one coast to the other for hours by foot, bike and kayak?! The tone was set as we headed for the registration room giggling and laughing - and the organisers, Rowan and Ian, heard us coming before they saw us. However they questioned whether it was nervous laughter. No chance! It was laughter at our inability to actually navigate our way to sign-on…..which left Rowan and Ian slightly concerned about how we would find our way across Ireland! This concern exploded 100-fold when they learned of the Belle's lack of training ahead of the event – particularly with regard to the kayak. Our vessel had been spotted pre-registration by many participants, who thought they were up against a professional paddling outfit! Ian said, "that's some green kayak you've got, you two must be experts, and you've got wing paddles, you will blitz it". In contrast to his expectation of a paddling related reply, all he got was, "it's not green, it's duck egg blue"! Perhaps he wishes the reply was left at that, because when we went on to inform him that the two of us had only sat in the K2 once together three days ago and had only paddled together once all year, in March on a sit-on-top kayak, his face fell. The kayak section contained a particularly rough section of open water – challenging for even the most practiced male paddlers in a stable boat as opposed to completely unpracticed female paddlers in an unstable boat! Anyway, briefing complete and it was back to sort our kit, have a pre race rub (told you we had one man who could do it all – support, driver, masseur, bike mechanic, feeder, and the single most important role…..photographer!), and get a couple of hours sleep! Breakfast was at 515am, with the race starting 7am. The girls and Paddy (sharing one room because the team that sleeps together wins together!) woke to the sound of wind and rain and momentarily hid back under the duvet! Taryn had a sore throat, but luckily only from snoring! Paddy had a sore leg, unluckily from being wrongly accused of snoring and kicked for it mid-sleep! By 630am the competitors and their crews were down on the beach making final preparations for the start of the 2-day event. There were meant to be 7 pairs and 8 solos taking on the immense challenge of Coast2Coast, but 2 pairs didn't show. Everybody walked together from the transition area over the dunes to the start line, with one of the Belles nearly not making it because on spying the camera wasn't concentrating on the path and walked straight into a pillar! The laughing had begun! The rain had eased a bit by start time, but the wind was blowing down the beach. The participants set out on a 5km out-and-back run, before heading into transition and off on the bikes for 108km. The Belles took 20mins 38 sec to run the beach 5km, placing them last, but unbeknown to them until later in the day, their speedy transition put them well up the field heading out on the bikes. Within the first 10km of the cycle the girls had passed 4 guys and for a short spell rode as a pack of 5 with a pair (DFAR boys) and a solo (Eamon Quigley), who dropped them after about 15km. However the Belles approached the race with a hare and tortoise mentality and while we were pushing at a good pace, it was at a pace we believed we could sustain for the whole ride. We reached the bike/kayak transition and with our excellent one-man support, who had everything laid out for us and the kayak down at the water, we did a speedy changeover and overtook a few teams getting out onto the water. After a shaky start…..ok…. a very, very wobbly and prolonged wobbly start…..and 20 minutes of wondering were they heading the right way on the river!......the girls started to find a little rhythm in the K2 kayak. However it is not a vessel that you can be comfortable in when unaccustomed to for fear of tipping over! You can't relax, everything is tense. The lack of constant chatter in the first half hour was testament to this! As was Taryn's constant instruction to Andrea, who was in the front cockpit, that she could keep talking back to Taryn but was only allowed to do so if she kept her head forward facing instead of turning around! By the time we reached the rough, open water of Garadice Lake after about 15km, we had passed 2 solos (Mark Hudson and Ivan Park) and 1 pair (DFAR) during the paddle. Halfway through the rough water, we passed another solo (Gary Bailey), and when Taryn shouted over how hard we were concentrating he laughed, retorting how could we be concentrating with so much talking going on and when he could hear us coming for miles! The open water was a real challenge, very taxing and required immense focus in a tippy boat. However we rose to the challenge and much to everybody's disbelief managed to make it through without capsizing. Ahem, because we didn't want to disappoint everybody, we did that just 10 minutes later! After passing through the rough stuff, the Belles headed slightly off course (only to catch up with Ivan and tell him he was going the wrong way of course!!) and ended up having to make a left hand turn to traverse some "rolling" water! All of a sudden that slight wobble we had for much of the day turned into a major tremor, from one side to the other, and the next thing we were swimming! Thankfully the water wasn't too cold….until we'd been in it for 10 minutes! It proved totally impossible to get back into a tippy kayak in the middle of open water. Maybe that's something we should have practiced. But oh yeah, we hadn't even practiced paddling it never mind capsizing! Anyway having heard the commotion, Ivan (fellow CCAR racer and team mate for the 4-day non-stop Terrex race end-August), having himself had to turn back in order to get on course made a detour to come to our rescue! Well, he wanted to rescue us but was also a bit concerned that by using his boat as leverage then we would capsize him too. In contrast Gary didn't bother coming to our rescue, instead shouting at a passing motor boat to help the damsels in distress. But they didn't understand his heavy Kilkeel accent, thought he was German, and ignored his request! Thankfully Ian was in a safety boat (because our reputation preceded us?!) and was with us in another few minutes – so we had his boat and Ivan's boat to perform the rescue mission! Now with two boats, two guys and some rescue expertise you would think everything would be plain sailing. Ahem, factor in two giggling girls, starting to seize up with cold and with limited flexibility and you get quite a comical scene. Apparently Andrea made a very elegant and graceful re-entry into the K2. Not! Anyway, 15 minutes after the capsize we were back in the boat paddling – sort of! The dunking had heightened nerves about the instability of the boat. Just how sensitive the K2 is may be clear to you all when Andrea, sitting in the front cockpit, felt some unusual tremors and asked Taryn if she knew what they were. It was Taryn shivering with the cold after capsizing! The length of the capsize meant that three boats had caught us by the halfway point, which was only 5 minutes from the capsize site. One of those boats was a male pair (DFAR) who made the mistake of shouting over at us "we've got you now girls". Ha! Red flag to a bull! We caught them within 10 minutes and left them for dead for the rest of the kayak section. Eat our spray boys! We were on the water (or in it!) for 3 hrs 20 mins and without relaxing the whole time, there were an array of aches and pains. We reached the end point of the kayak at Ballyconnell to welcome sound of the Belles clanging bell – which put the fear of God into other racers when first hearing it, particularly Ivan who nearly fell off his bike when Paddy first drove past him ringing it!, but was a comforting sound to Taryn and Andrea for the weekend! After the kayak there just remained 17km on the bike to Lisnaskea Share Centre until the finish of Day 1. Ivan was hot on our heels out of the kayak and we knew he'd try to catch us before the finish line. So we let him with 500m to go just because he had come to our rescue in the kayak. Joke! I mean joke that we let him catch us, not that his rescue attempt was a joke! Elated at our own performance we crossed the finish line in 8 hrs 3 min and 15 sec. Very shortly afterwards we were even more elated, being told that we were 2nd pair overall and only 2 solos had been quicker than us. Ding dong! Day 1 was always going to be the easier day however and although Day 2 only had two sections, those sections were a 123km bike followed by a 33km Mountains of Mourne run (well, when I say run I mean run/jog/walk/crawl/cry!) And now we had added pressure – trying not to let our position slip way down the rankings. We were started at 5 minute intervals on Sunday morning, depending on our times for Day 1, so the Belles were one of the last racers set off. Our aim was to catch the pair ahead of us, who had started 10 minutes ahead of us on Day 2, because we had beaten them by 8 minutes on Day 1. Again we cycled hard on Day 2, probably harder than we would have aimed to in the knowledge of the run section that lay between the end of the 123km cycle and the finish line in Newcastle. Not only did we catch the Pair we had wanted to, but also some of the other pairs and solos that had been set off before us at the start of Day 2. All of this gave us a boost, but we knew that the hardest part of the weekend was still to come and that anything could happen. The weather was slightly better for the first part of Day 2, and virtually tropical (ok, muggy!) by the time we reached Kilbroney Park for the start of the final section of Coast2Coast. After a complete change of clothing, by which stage the girls did not care about nudity in the car park (but Paddy did and when he realised we were stripped off he held up a towel to shield the two of us – well there has to be some perk to being support crew for two females!), and a relatively speedy transition, Taryn and Andrea set off on the 33km run (?!). The first 10km was a steady uphill gradient on forest track, following the Mourne Way, and the Belles covered it at a fairly good pace, in humid conditions. Early in this stage the girls chatted with solo Des Ryan and would later point him the right direction when he got slightly lost on the mountainside. Given the challenge of the event so far and the knowledge of what lay ahead in the mountains, the organisers decided to allow an extra support point at 10km. This was out on the road, where the girls then had a 2km tarmac section before veering back into the mountains. As they did so, the weather deteriorated, but the rainfall was a welcome relief after the heat of the early stages. With a constant check over their shoulders, still fearing that they could lose many places by the end of the race, the Belles made slow progress over the uneven mountainside terrain and then up to Spelga Dam car park for the 20km support point. After a change of shoes and socks, in preparation for the mountain section proper, and refuelling, the girls were on their way in no time. The route took them back onto the Mourne Way and along a non-gradient, but rugged and uneven pathway to Trassey gate. Running along this section the Belles met two walkers coming to opposite way. Taryn was slightly ahead and one walker asked her where we were finishing, and was highly impressed when she said Newcastle. By the time he commented on this, Andrea was passing and he asked where we had started – he nearly passed out when Andrea replied Sligo the previous morning! Trassey gate was the location of a checkpoint before the ascent up into the mountains. By this stage the weather had closed in and the organisers made waterproofs mandatory from this point. Halfway between Spelga and Trassey while Taryn continued to bound like a mountain goat, Andrea started to feel incredibly ill and incredibly slow. Perhaps the fact that the girls decided to do the wheelbarrow along the Mourne Way was that we just felt the race itself wasn't hard enough on foot??!! Or was it indicative of sore legs??!! Living by Taryn's motto, "Run if you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must - but never stop" we decided that if the quads fail, the two of us have big enough biceps to make our way forward by the means of arms rather than legs! In a bid to try and get something from somewhere, Andrea must have eaten her weight in chocolate before the ascent to Hare's Gap. Unfortunately it didn't help! But something somewhere kept moving her forward (not just Taryn's hand on her back!) despite feeling worse and worse. By the top she felt like she was having an outer body experience and for the most prolonged time in the entire race, there was little chat. Andrea simply uttered the odd sentence in a bid to feel she was in some way living. It is at such times that knowing you're with the right partner is crucial, there when you need and leaving you alone when you need. The walk/jog along the Brandy Pad seemed to last forever but finally the Col between Slieve Donard and Slieve Commedagh was in site. The Belles had a distinct advantage in knowing the Mournes, with Andrea knowing the route like the back of her hand and not needing to look at a map for the entire course. Unfortunately those that didn't know the area got into navigational difficulties. From the Col it was a 45 minute descent down the slippy, rocky Glen River to Newcastle and a final 1.5km run along the promenade to the finish line at Slieve Donard Hotel. What a setting for a finish to an immensely challenging event. The waves were crashing onto the beach and Sunday evening walkers and cyclists were out in full force, with many spectators there to applaud all finishers, including the Bikedock Belles "Mini Support Crew". Taryn and Andrea had completed Day 2 in a total 9 hrs 28 min 1 sec and had not only held onto their 2nd position, but had extended their race time over the 3rd place team to 2 hrs from the mere 8 mins at the end of Day 1. Having dipped their trainers in the sea at Enniscrone the previous morning, all that remained was to dip their trainers in the sea at Newcastle – admittedly though it was the quads and calfs that needed dipped on the East coast! Ding dong! |
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