Stone Cross to Lug

[johnd]

Stone Cross to Lug Solo 2015

Super race, thanks to Eoin Syron for organising this year to give me and all the others a chance to race it. Brutal tough course, straight through the most beautiful parts of the Wicklow Mountains. It was a privilege to be able to see this part of Ireland.

Training for this race was the same as any other – could have been better. Averaging 20 – 25 k per week in April I brought it up to 35k per week in May, lost my way in June before hitting 45k per week in July and about 65k per week for August, still pretty low. Goal for the race was to complete, I reckoned I had about 8hrs 30mins in me and that became the target.

Having not ever done any orienteering and with limited open mountain racing behind me, navigation was going to be a big part. I was confident however that I had enough wherewithal and had done my homework plotting out bearings for this race and previous ones that it wouldn't be a problem. Three small kids and a travel time of over an hour to any part of the course meant that recce's were never going to happen.

I barely spoke about the race at all leading up to it, if I didn't have to talk about it then it didn't seem so impossible to tackle. This worked grand up until the night before the race when 4 hours sleep seemed the least of my worries.

Food and water all packed across three bags, mandatory kit and spare clothing all stowed, and I was standing chatting with several other hardy souls near the stone cross in South County Dublin that gives the race half its name. General chit chat interspersed with talk of route choice made for an interesting 30 mins. Eoin called us together, last minute run through and we're off up the fire road towards the top of Seahan, the first of 17 mountain tops plus 4 additional locations to be visited.

Faced with a long hard day in front of me like that I did the only I would do – try to keep up with the relay teams!! It wasn't until I had crossed both Seahan and Corrig, and I was halfway along the ridge towards Seefingan that I finally reigned it back in and let those near me off, 30 minutes in and the heart rate had been far too high so far. I took the opportunity to walk up Seefingan and get some food into me. This was the pattern for the day, walk the uphill’s and try a few bites of food or a gel while at it.

Summiting Seefingan I made the smartest move of the race, I hooked up with two fantastic orienteers Rob McEvoy and Josh O'Sullivan, both from Cork. I stuck with them for most of the race thereafter and learned a huge amount from them both. Bog running, map reading, contouring, line selection, attack points, these guys taught me bucket loads just by running along with them.

The hook up was just in time too, coming off Seefingan I was hit by the sight of our first bog field of the day. It was an impressively large sight but Josh and Rob had already picked their line and were off. “Stay off the top and run along the bottom of the hags” Rob shouted back. Sure enough it was a good strategy and we were off kicking up black peat behind us heading for Kippure. Kippure sure is one big lump of a mountain, and with only the very top of it covered in fog, it was an impressive sight to be heading for. The fog was thick enough that the mast only became visible from about 200m.

Some of the talk at the start had been about route choice coming down the far side of Kippure. The choice was a direct line across the bog, or a longer route running down the surfaced access road. Conscious of the long day ahead we chose to conserve energy and take the access road. In hindsight this was the correct choice as we didn't seem to lose time on others.

Plodding along the Military road the end of Leg 1 and with the first bag drop for solo runners minutes away, I found myself longing for a mug of tea. I settled instead for the can of coke and ham sandwich that I had packed and restocked my backpack with water and food. I also had a decision to make regarding my water supply.

With perfect timing the water bladder in my backpack had sprung a leak at 9:50pm the night before the race, right where the tube junctions the bladder. I decided to superglue and fill it overnight to see how it performed. The next morning I was disappointed to see it was still leaking with perhaps only 30% of the water still in it. I made the decision race morning that I would chance the bladder for the convenience of carrying it, but leave two small bottles in my first drop bag to carry if I needed them. That was a good decision as I still had some water left at the end of the first leg. I made another good decision to refill the bladder and take it with me for the second leg, but made a bad decision in not carrying one of the other bottles as back up. Leg one took 1:47 and I had consumed one energy bar and one standard gel. It was an unintentionally leisurely stop as it turns out and several runners over took me, either running straight through or not stopping nearly as long.

The two lads had left the checkpoint about a minute before me and I spent a lot of the climb up Carrigvoher trying to catch up with them but not blow a gasket. Managed it before the top anyway. Descending Carrigvoher we fortuitously (for me) caught up with Jim Breyfogle before yet another soggy bog field. I took my eye off the ball somewhere along here. Whilst we were all 4 running in the same vicinity I was following my own line separate to Rob & Josh. Following a rather spectacular jump from the top of a peat hag down to the bog I hadn't really looked at my target landing sight and found myself up to my waist in slushy black stuff. A very brief “Oh crap” moment was followed by the realisation that I had three runners nearby, luckily Jim was right behind me and managed to help me out. It was a silly error and one I won’t make again. As coincidences go, Josh was helping Rob out of a very similar situation only 15 meters away at the exact same time.

Gravale was next to be summited. At the top we had a perfect view of our next target Duffy Hill and the very steep climb ahead of us. Before that however we had to get down off Gravale. What a horrible descent. Quite steep heading down, we had to traverse a field of grass covering really uneven tussocky (word?) ground. I hated this bit for two reasons, the horrible underfoot conditions of the descent, and every step I took down I'd have to climb up again that awful looking slope in front of us.

Climbing Duffy Hill the watch registered no pace – it was painfully slow. Climbing up the same tussocky ground it took an effort. Somewhere going up here I managed to stick with Rob & Josh but we pulled away from Jim. Across the top and the lads were plotting the route to Mullaghcleevaun East. Decision made was to contour west towards more open bog in order to avoid losing any more elevation than necessary. It felt good to get off that uneven ground and back onto some good sloppy bog!

A rather uneventful climb towards Mullaghcleevaun East was rewarded with more stunning views, including the boggy ridge below us to be crossed on the way to Mullaghcleevaun proper. Graham Bushe was another solo runner and his bright orange top had been visible in various different locations ahead of us for most of the run so far. We appeared to be closing the last while and we all reached the trig point on Mullaghcleevaun within seconds of each other. Graham took a short break here whilst we pressed on.

Up next was the dreaded Barnacuillian Ridge, a vast bog renowned for holding huge amounts of water. All the advice both myself and the two lads had garnered beforehand said to stay East and make our way along the top of the steep fall off towards the Glenmacnass River. Whilst we managed to maintain fairly dry peat underfoot, there were a lot of small streams to be crossed. These streams had of course eroded fairly deep tracks that involved a lot of slipping down leaping across and climbing up steep peaty banks for each of these streams. Great fun on fresh legs, cramp city coming as they did halfway through an 8 hour race.

Stony Top came and went. The climbing continued alongside the cliffs of Lough Ouler on our way to the top of Tonelagee. This being the only part of the course I had ever been on before, I did my bit for local tourism with the two Cork boys, pointing out the stunning views down to Lough Ouler as well as translating Tonelagee from Irish back to English for them (Backside to the wind).

The descent off Tonelagee is one of the fastest around, but my legs were in no fit state to be taking it on at any sort of speed. What followed so was a slow sore shuffle down the steep hillside and over to the end of leg 2 and my second drop bag. During leg 2 I had consumed an energy bar, a banana, a standard gel, a caffeinated gel and a few wine gums.

My leaky water bladder had ran dry on the climb up Stony Top and by this stage I was really regretting not having grabbed one of my spare bottles form the first drop bag. Of course I hadn't thought to leave another bottle in this drop bag and I had no choice but to refill the leaky backpack and pray for the best. Leg 3 being the longest, what could go wrong? Anyway, another ham sandwich and a can of coke, a change of tops and again about a minute after the two lads as they set off up the tarmac road to Turlough Hill reservoir. I had been saying to the pair of them all along not to wait for me at any stage, do their own thing, but if they didn't mind I'd follow them as long as I could. They seemed happy enough, I was delighted for the company and the guidance.

We were all starting to suffer at this stage and reference was made to the three women on Kilnascully as we power walked our way up most of the road. None of us were looking to take any shortcuts off road and we stuck to the big loops up the hill side. Looking back it doesn't seem as if we lost much time with this decision.

After a short discussion regarding the location of the communications hut it was found, we touched it, and we were off. We had a wonderful view of our next target Counavalla, the only problem was the valley between us. The experienced orienteers that they are, Rob & Josh didn't want to lose any elevation that they didn't have to. More contouring ensued. I was feeling the pinch at this stage and was conscious of trying to make my water last, yet wanting to drink as much of it as I could before it leaked away.

After crossing yet more open bog we hit the top of the spur the lads had been aiming for and only one more obstacle between us and Counavalla, the wonderfully named “Hag's Sloughs”. This was surely the place that Peter Jackson brought the two little hobbits to film them crossing the Dead Marshes as they tried to get in through the back door into Mordor. A sloppy wet black expanse, it certainly lived up to its name. Anyway no one got into trouble and a rendezvous with Graham once more at the summit of Counavalla.

Next up was Table Track junction and a similar problem of contour or straight across down and up. Somewhere along here Rob & Josh both clocked up their first ever marathon distances in a time of 6 hours +. Rob & Josh contoured, Graham took a more direct line, we all hit Table Track junction together. I had decided at this stage that there was no way I could attempt to outsprint the two lads at the end after following them for most of the way. When the finish came I'd trot in maybe ten seconds behind them.

By this stage I was out of water and knew that there was at least another 12 k of this and probably two hours left. After finding the leak in the bladder the night before I had decided to place the bladder inside a regular plastic shopping bag. At Table Track junction Josh helped me to spill the water sloshing around inside the shopping bag back into the bladder, it was probably about 250ml.

Hydration crisis postponed we set off to climb Camenabologue. Josh appeared to be suffering on the descent off Camenabologue but persevered. We stopped for a few minutes in the Imaal Gap, Lugnaquilla stood massively in front of us indicating an end to our climbing. As we were about to set off three runners appeared from our right and started into the long climb towards Cannow and Lugnaquilla 100m in front of us, and we could see Graham at about 200m behind us. Over seven hours into a mountain ultra of which just 18 people started, and here are seven solo runners all within a few hundred meters of each other – amazing.

The sight of the others was all the encouragement Josh needed and he took off up the slope after them. We caught and passed Jarlath but Duncan and Jim were staying ahead of us. As we came onto the shoulder of Cannow I took my last gel and when I went for water there was only a dribble. Head down, power on, I kept running. This was the only climb that I mostly ran, the rest of them were almost exclusively walked. I appeared to be closing in on Duncan and Jim, but when I glanced back I had put a bit of distance back to Rob & Josh behind.

Shortly before we got to the top of Cannow I caught Duncan and Jim. We had a brief chat about where Cannow summit actually was as it was a required checkpoint. We didn’t realise we were standing on the top of Cannow at the time and mistakenly took off for a prominence to the North East of Lug. It was a small error as it only added a few minutes at most to our time.

With almost all the elevation gained at this stage it was a short and easy trot over to the trig point on Lugnaquilla itself. Skirting alongside the cliffs of the South Prison we had a great view. Duncan overtook me here and got to the trig point first with Jim on my heels. After an all too brief glance around the amazing views on offer I considered that we were still in a race. I took a bearing from my compass and off I shot in the direction of our final mandatory summit Camara. This time the route took me alongside the cliffs of the North Prison and yet more amazing views.

Things got a bot gnarly in short as the ground steepened and the lovely grass was replaced with lots of big stones and boulders. Duncan and Jim caught up with me here and we regrouped for a few minutes after the rocky slope. Somewhere along here Jim tells me he's run about 150 ultras!

Anyway on we press and I happen to open up a small gap on the nice fast decent towards Camara. All thoughts of chivalry were gone at this stage and I redlined it up the small climb to summit Camara. The grassy descent on the far side was slower and trickier than it looked. As I hit the gate out onto the laneway I looked back for the first time and could see no one. Out onto the lane I pushed hard but was conscious that there was still about 2k to go. They were definitely the flattest and the hardest 2k of the whole race.

Up ahead I see a few lads out standing on the final turn of the laneway clapping me in, I can smell the BBQ at this stage, out onto the road, woddle around the corner and into the small courtyard in front of Fenton's.

Shattered and delighted, I managed to finish my first ever ultra. Jim, Duncan, Graham, Rob & Josh all come in hot on my heels. An 8 hour 15 min race, and 6 of us all finish within 4 minutes of each other.

On leg 3 I consumed 1 energy bar, 1 regular gel, 1 caffeinated gel, 1 chomp bar, 2 bananas and half a packet of wine gums.

Fantastic race and thanks again to Eoin Syron for stepping up to do Race Director so the rest of us could get a full day out in the beautiful Wicklow Mountains.

[DavidT]

Well done John! Great going.

[BarryB]

Never one to let us down on he reports John, well done sounds brilliant.

[don]

Great report and even better result John. I'm sure you've been walking down the stairs backwards for the last few days.

[DavidF]

Well done John, and yes, "tussocky" is a word..

[lazyboypops]

Great report John and an even better race. I don't know how you remember all that detail and run as well. Fantastic achievement.

[Eimearbowden]

Wow John...on report and race! Congrats on super achievement!

[niallomuiri]

Well done John...I got a cramp reading the report...brilliant stuff

[frankb]

ah jaysus john, Im too tired to start it tonight! Will read it over the weekend - I'll start friday night and will post on Sun night - all goin well

Seriously though - fantastic achievement especially on probably fairly limited training time availability

[BShaugh]

Epic John. What a day out. Sounds like a super race. Great report thanks