You gotta #TriHarder

Lough Derg in the morning.

A review of last weekend's training - Time for some teamwork.

With the Beast of Ballyhoura just over 2 weeks away it was kinda getting to the time for a little team work. Mike and I had worked well in #Endure24 and didn't kill each other (apart from noxious gases) over the long hours in close proximity, I think laughing had a lot to do with that. It was time to bring some of the jigsaw together last weekend.

To be honest I was a bit anxious as history shows I'm not the best Mountain Biker in the province, by a long shot. So far in my MTB experience I'm a '2fer' (Out twice, accident twice) so I was wary of what we would be up to.

Plan was Saturday night #MTB on the Ballyhoura trails. This was after less than 5 hours sleep on Friday night, a Saturday morning trail run, a day in work so I was all set up to test the endurance and effect of tiredness.

Anyhow, down to Ballyhoura, met up with TriHarder teammate Kate, made the introductions, offloaded the bikes, kitted up and off we went warming up on the road to the trails. Warren was to meet up with us in a wee while so we did a couple of laps of the Skills Loops starting with 1 and then Skills Loop 2. Back to the carpark and discovered Warren was still on route somewhere and we'd have an hour so quick decision to head off on the longer brown trail and set him the task of the green so we'd finish sometime together.

Kate experienced a spectacular off. I was at the back and just watched as her bike, bucked, bounced and fired her off over the bars. On inspection we discovered she'd clipped a stump which launched her into the heather between two piles of rocks. Poor Kate giggled her way down the hill with bruised & cut knees nursing her front wheel which was destroyed.

Perfect alignment for cornering!!!

Limping back to the cars, the one positive was my bike no longer squeaked the loudest!. We met Warren on the road, easily identified as a #TriHarder as we were the only eejits biking up there at night :)

Warren had his own issues with a puncture and was making his way back to the car too.

Loaded up and off we went to Mikes for showers, tea, repairs and discussion til the wee hours.

Mike the Mechanic

Got to the point at 1:30 where, "ah sure we may as well go on out for a trek." "Sure, we're on the bikes in 3.5hrs, no point sleeping now" at which point I nudged Warren and told him to make a break for bed. Kate full of beans on adrenaline was bouncing around the place like a bluebottle. She was next to be sent packing!!

2hrs of kip on the sofa broken only by the vision of Mike trying to suffocate me with a blanket and we were back on point. Coffee, porridge and more coffee and we were off to Killaloe for Day 2.

Parking at UL Activity Centre we followed the marked trails for the East Clare Way and MTB'd our way up making a decision to dump them and trek our way to the top.

(Note: Our maps were slightly out of date so we dumped earlier than necessary ~1km)

Job done, time to hump it back down, pick up the bikes and let her rip to Killaloe where the plan was to go up the other side looking for Graves of the Leinster Men.

A minor navigation error kept us on the main road rather on the walking route, but chief mapreader Warren soon put us right and up towards Tountinna where we biked to the top, enjoyed the view, grabbed a sandwich before hiking over the top to look for the Graves.

We allocated time to our search as we had to be back at UL Activity Centre for 11am. (Yes! Most of this was done before many had rolled over in their beds! :) )

Checking the map we realised the Graves were in a very arbritary position and we were the wrong side of that for easy access. About turn, back to the bikes and

WHEEEEEEEEE!!! all the way down again :) :)

Kate caught a rear puncture. 'Pitstop Pete' changed it in 4 mins from stop to go and we were off again catching the boys who we reckoned were in Ballina slurping down a 99.

A

All that was left was a 2 hour practical lesson in handling sit-on-top kayaks with Mike Jones. This was a steep learning curve for me and part of my issue is trying to understand the physics of what my paddling is doing rather than just finding a groove and letting it happen.

As the team said, we've 53km in the Beast to figure it out!! (Minimum 53km)

All in all a great weekend of training, bonding, figuring things out, planning and we're all about set for a few more 'wind-down' sessions before toeing the line in 2 weeks time!!!

Have you ever done anything like this before? All advice is welcomed.