The future is now: Adventure racing

ATHLETICS:In our growing pursuit of heroic personal fitness it's not so much going faster, higher, stronger anymore, but simply going somewhere different, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

BY THE time my few yet faithful readers will have even purchased this newspaper I’ll have run a beautiful circuit from the car park at the Upper Lake of Glendalough, up past the old silver mines, over the top of The Spink mountain and back down past the Pollanass Waterfall. I’ll have hopped immediately onto my bike and cycled through Laragh and Annamoe and through the quiet back roads into the magnificent Lough Dan. Straightaway I’ll have jumped into a kayak and paddled a boomerang loop around the crystal water, and once ashore I’ll have hopped back on my bike and cycled furiously back into Glendalough.

Me, and about 800 others, I should add. If we’re lucky and we don’t puncture or crash or indeed drown, we’ll be having tea and sandwiches at the lakeside before 11am – our bodies flush with endorphins and nothing more stressful on our minds than trying to remember all the words of the Louis Armstrong song.

Yes, nothing like a little gentle exercise to kick-start the weekend. Especially when the sun is shining and it feels like the start of a long, hot summer.

Truth is, adventure is big industry these days, and in our growing pursuit of heroic personal fitness it’s not so much going faster, higher, stronger anymore, but simply going somewhere different. There is only so much running we can do on the treadmill before we start to feel like woolly mice. There is only so much sweating we can take in the spinning class before we realise the exercise bike hasn’t actually gone anywhere.

So some of us have resorted to WAR – as in the Wicklow Adventure Race. It’s not the first of its kind, but it is the first in Wicklow, and, as everyone knows, they don’t call this place the Garden of Ireland for nothing.

It’s the perfect playground for running and cycling and kayaking and even some gentle hill-walking – but the idea here is we do a few such activities in quick succession. This is what is known as adventure racing, although precious few of us will have been racing against each other, or indeed the clock. It’s a race against the limits of our determination.

And we’ll have had this section of Wicklow National Park more or less to ourselves.

“If we’d tried to put this event on five years ago we would have really struggled,” Brian Crinion, one of the WAR organisers, told me this week.

Crinion, a former triathlon champion, specialises in these kinds of events, and is also part of the successful Tri-Athy organising team. “The National Parks has effectively given us Glendalough for the day, and they very rarely do something like that.

“We approached them last September, well in advance, and they were very supportive. Wicklow tourism has been really pushing this, and specifically the Wicklow Uplands Council, who have actually developed a strategy to attract adventure tourists. We start at 8.0 in the morning, and most competitors will be finished by noon. The day-trippers only start arriving at that time, so they really see the value here in promoting the national park.

“But I also think John Gormley, as Minister for the Environment, has put pressure on the national parks, that part of their remit is tourism. Coillte, too, have changed on this, and been more active in attracting events into the forests, rather than just seeing them as a place to grow trees. And consider this event alone is going to bring over €100,000 into the Wicklow economy this weekend, in business for local guesthouses, pubs, restaurants and all that.”

Crinion has a second WAR planned for September, on the Glenmalure side of Wicklow. And already several adventure races are well established, including the Gaelforce West, in late August, which traverses Killary Harbour and Croagh Patrick; the Beast of Ballyhoura, on the August Bank Holiday weekend; the Achill ROAR, on September 11th; and the new Dingle Adventure Race, on June 12th. If you’re not in there you better hurry up. Entries for WAR were capped at 800, and sold out several weeks ago.

“We could have sold a lot more, definitely,” explained Crinion. “It’s still huge for the first year. And there is definitely a demand for events like this. It came down to logistics, really, such as car parking in the area. That’s the only limit really.

“The attraction, I suppose, is doing something different than the ordinary road race. I spoke to Frank Greally of Irish Runner magazine about this and he said, Brian, you may think you’re in the sports industry, but you’re in the entertainment industry. It is about giving people a good time.”

It helps, of course, if you get the weather. Last Sunday, 3,200 people ran either a half, full or indeed ultra marathon through Connemara in blissfully warm sunshine, the only distraction being catching their reflection in the perfectly still Lough Inagh. The Connemarathon, as it has become known, sold out a full four months in advance – and if you plan on being part of next year’s 10th anniversary edition you better get your entry in quick. It’s an amazing experience no matter what the weather.

For many, the simple 10k road race is still enough to supply that healthy exercise endorphin rush – which, by the way, the latest scientific research suggests is every bit as chill-inducing as the finest Jamaican spliff. (Endorphin, after all, is an abbreviation of endogenous morphine, as in morphine naturally produced by the body, and exercise also produces anandamide, which results in similar sensations to THC, the psychoactive property in marijuana.)

That perhaps helps explain why an incredible 11,000 people have signed up for the Great Ireland Run in the Phoenix Park at 1pm tomorrow – less than 1 per cent of whom have any ambition of winning. This is now the largest mixed 10k road race in the country, and quite a large percentage of them do have ambitions to run a full marathon later this year. They’re spoilt for choice, too, given practically every county now stages the classic 26.2 miles. Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Belfast, Clare, Kerry, Longford, etc.

We may be living in desperate times alright, but there is a way out. If you believe only the RTÉ newsreaders and the taxi drivers and the other prophets of doom, then look out. You might find some people near you this weekend in a very good mood.

And it’s not all to do with the fine weather. Yes, nothing like a little gentle exercise to kick-start the weekend.