Jack and I roused to another grey, cold and overcast day. We knew we were getting close to the end of the race with around 500km to go, so that was a somewhat motivating wake up call. As we set about packing our gear away (which we were pretty efficient at now after doing it very morning so far), I opened my front bag to find the fruit I had purchased the previous night in the shop covered in slugs and half eaten! I had laid my bike down on its side on the grass the night before and obviously the slugs had smelt out my fruit. The apples were goners, but the slugs had only managed the skin of the bananas, so they were still good to go. We got moving, and similar to the previous morning, we were dead to the world, with not a word passing between us. It was drizzling and we were slowly getting wetter and wetter, but we kept pushing on, the only positive to take was the view over to the next peninsula along, the Beara Peninsula, which we would be getting to grips with later on that day.
After about 20km into the day, our friends from the night before, whom we had passed as they called it a night, passed us and were once again motoring along, as opposed to our plodding along. Jack and I both kind of knew that we would never see them again, as they were looking so strong, and we never would. They would go on to finish about 12 hours quicker than us. After 35km of wet ridding, we stumbled into Waterville, passing a Charlie Chaplin statue which I would later go on to find was to celebrate the fact that Charlie Chaplin and his family came to Waterville every year for ten years for holidays back in the sixties. We stopped for a breakfast roll to warm up and dry off and utilise the restroom facilities. While Jack was in the toilet, I managed to fall asleep in the chair I was sitting in and after startling awake, realised Jack was still in the bathroom. I knocked on the door to see how he was getting on and he said he would be done soon. He claims not to have, but he had definitely fallen asleep on the toilet!
We knew we had some brutes of climbs ahead of us as we came out of the Iveragh Peninsula, and the first of these was the Ballaghisheen Pass. Coming out of Waterville, it was a steady climb up to the pass for about 20km, but then the final 3km of it were brutally steep, with Jack and I walking most of it. As we came over the pass, we were hit with a wall of wind and rain which were funnelling through the pass with great intensity. So we quickly hurtled down the descent to try and get out of the wind and rain and eventually we did, coming around through the Bridia Valley and onto the next climb of the day, the Ballaghbeama Gap, the fifth and final climb on the Mike Hall KOM Challange. This was my favourite climb (if one can say that as they heave themselves up it) of the whole race. It was broody, misty, quiet and barren, and just seemed to go on forever into the distance. I snapped some great shots of it, which now serve as my phone background, constantly reminding me of that moment. After the Ballaghbeama Gap, we continued onto the next Gap, Molly’s Gap. We were back onto an N-Road, so there was a lot of traffic to be dealt with. We rolled into Kenmare and stopped for a decent lunch before our next challenge, the Beara Peninsula.
Leaving Kenmare, we rode along a long road through a pine forest before it opened up and led into the final big climb of the race, the Healy Pass, which was 5km in length. It was built during the Great Famine to help prevent starvation and the top of the pass is the border between Kerry and Cork. There were impressive views on the climb up, and once we got over the top, a looping, hairpin filled descent awaited. Mum messaged me soon after, obviously seeing my GPS tracker location, telling me how she and my Dad used to go the Healy Pass to watch rallying back in their youth. We had a blast hurtling down this descent and pushing our Bromptons to their limits, which probably isn’t advisable given what they, and we, had been through so far, but we threw caution to the wind and flew down.
We had to complete a loop of the tip of the Beara Peninsula before coming back on ourselves and regrettably this was a part of the race I really didn’t enjoy. I’d heard the Beara Peninsula was breath-taking, and is a popular tourist cycling destination in Ireland, so before the race had started, I had looked forward to it, but I hadn’t accounted for just how tired I would be at that point in the race. In addition to my exhaustion, my internal hub gearing was acting up and jumping a lot which is frustrating on any normal cycle, but again, because of my fatigue, it was really irritating me and getting on my nerves (it thankfully stopped the next day through no mechanical intervention by me). My route on my Garmin had also stopped working at this point, evidently it hadn’t loaded correctly, so from here to the end, I would be relying on Jack to call out directions, which is fine normally, but it can get annoying for the both of us to constantly be in communication every time a turn comes up. And finally, I was sick of the food I had available to me. I had bought a large pack of Nature Valley bars at the last shop we had stopped at and had nothing else, so they were all I had available to eat, and I was getting to a point where I just didn’t want to keep eating them and felt nauseas every time I ate one, but I couldn’t stop eating them as I had to keep fuelling myself, so I just keep feeling worse and worse. We eventually made it out to Dursey Island, which has got an old school cable car over to the island, and the only one in Ireland. As you could imagine, I was thrilled to witness such an incredible spectacle in my current state.
We completed the rest of the loop, and as we were coming back into Castletown-Bearhaven, it was getting late and I was growing concerned about not getting a resupply in before we pushed on late into the evening. As we rolled into town, Jack’s front light bracket snapped, as mine had on the second day into the race. We had stopped to fix it, but I decided to push on into the village to snoop out shops as it was almost 10pm. I spotted a Centra that was evidently in the process of closing up, with the staff putting on jackets and most of the lights turned off. I rushed in and explained the situation and thankfully, the boss stayed on and allowed me to buy some food, for which I was extremely thankful. We would have been fairly buggered had the shop been closed, with no obvious big town on the immediate route that would have had a shop open late, and an expected early start the next day.
At this point, we were around 300km from the finish in Kinsale, we were within striking distance. Before the race had started and during the sign up process, you could have booked a bed at the finish in Kinsale, so that regardless of when you finished, whether in the day or in the middle of the night, there would be a bed for you. Jack and I had foregone this option as Mum had agreed that she would come down to collect us. I didn’t exactly want her to have to come down in the middle of the night to pick us up and drive us back to Dublin, about a 3-hour drive. To add an extra layer of confusion, Jack’s girlfriend, Thea, had messaged me before the race explaining how she wanted to surprise Jack at the finish and asking the best way to get to the finish in Kinsale etc. I explained that my Mum would be driving down to meet us at the end of the race, so the best option was to fly to Dublin and stay with my Mum and Aunt before driving down with my Mum. It was hard to judge before the race how long we expected the whole thing to take and when we would be getting into Kinsale, so I gave a best case scenario which Thea booked a flight for and then if we were a bit delayed, she could stay with my Mum and Aunt and drive down with Mum when the time came.
This is when it all got frustrating for me, I had Jack who was keen to make it to the end as quick as possible, and I had Mum and Thea (who Jack still had no idea was coming), whom wanted to be there when we finished. With 300km to go, if we had stopped for the night, we wouldn't be getting into Kinsale until late the next day. Jack was fine with this, saying we could just bivvy at the end of the race next to the finish location, and Mum could come down and collect us the next morning. So I had to angle it to Jack, without him thinking something fishy was up, that Mum really wanted to be there at the finish, so we should try to arrive at a reasonable hour. So we agreed that we would push on for another while and then we’d push on for Kinsale the next day. I relayed this information on to Mum, obviously trying to explain the situation we were in. She explained that her and Thea didn’t mind if Jack and I finished late, she’d still make the drive. Like I said before, Irish Mums, they can’t be beaten! Again, before the race I thought this would be easy enough to arrange all this as we got closer to the finish of the race, but the exhaustion was making me somewhat irrational and I was getting exasperated with having to keep the surprise going and having to deal with it all.
After we had gobbled the food I’d purchased in the closing Centra, Jack had propped and cable tied up his front light enough that it would hold for the rest of the race and we pushed on for another 30km before calling it quits for the night. We took a slip road off our route and found a spot that looked ideal, apart from a dodgy looking van, but after some investigation, we decided it was abandoned and not full of weirdos who would assault us in the night, thank goodness. Similar to the first half of the race, our sleeping gear had become more and more damp and wet after each night we’d slept in it since we had managed to dry it all out at the second checkpoint in Connemara. Jack and I knew that this would likely be our last sleep of the race, so for once, we didn’t mind getting into slightly soggy sleeping bags, it’d all be over soon.
Distance (km): 233
Elevation (m): 2,978
Moving Time (hh:mm:ss): 13:40:37
Elapsed Time (hh:mm:ss): 18:27:16
Moving Time Percentage: 74.11%
Average Speed (km/h): 17
Calories: 4,940
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 102
Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2449870236
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