Posted on behalf of Maurice McCartan:
On Sat 17^th Sept at 7.45am 273 hardy souls popped their crazy pills that morning and leaped into the chilly waters of Kenmare Bay. Strong winds and rain were forecast for the day but thankfully the gales stayed away but the wet stuff came down relentlessly for large parts of the course.

After a comical few minutes battling severe cramp to put on my runners for the 1K run into T1, I blazed through transition and beat it out onto the road on The Red Demon burning up the road motivated by my poor show in the swim. I was ploughing along rightly through the crowds until I hit the 1^st of the days’ big climbs, the dreaded Helly Pass (AKA Healy Pass) which was followed with a pretty disastrous display of my cornering technique on the winding downhill. After taking in some pretty spectacular scenery the next of the climbs Caha Pass came shortly after the halfway point at Glengarriff although I could have been delirious at this point because I swear it said Ha Ha Pass, I am pretty sure whoever came up with the course had a good laugh when they included this section. After this climb the course was fairly flat and smooth for the remainder of the course though there was a small patch of pot holes which gave my under carriage a right old rattling, not nice!

On hitting T2 I hopped of the bike and passed though pretty quick out onto the run only to be hit with the jelly legs. My thighs were cramping so much I was giving a lot of consideration to dropping out as it felt like I was at a fast walk pace rather than a run. Somehow I was still passing out quite a few numbers along the way so I decided to motor on. It took me a good 6-7k to loosen out my legs and develop a decent pace. Coming up on the half way point I was passed by Hugh and then Mick shortly afterwards going in the opposite direction, I thought that would be the last I saw of them until the finish but once I hit the turn around point my legs were well stretched out at this stage and I was able to lift the pace. I had a good battle with a couple of lads from Waterford on the return leg which really helped to pull me along and I was well surprised when I caught Hugh and Mick over the last 1-2k to make it to the finish line as the first member from the club. I doubt I will repeat this result next year as Mick is surely going to improve his run and I have no doubt that Hugh will too, I would need to take a good 5-10mins of my swim to keep ahead and that is not likely.

All in all It was a great race despite the piss poor weather, the club was represented well with myself, Mick Davis, Hugh Mc Carthy, Colm Daly, Alison Rooney, Aoife Nash and Miriam Byrne all making the trip to Kerry. Times

Are as follows:

Maurice Mc Cartan Swim 38.00 T1 8.52 Cycle 2.43.44 T2 1.59 Run 1.38.33 Overall 5.11.08 (53^rd)

Mick Davis Swim 27.28 T1 8.55 Cycle 2.46.42 T2 1.48 Run 1.46.55 Overall 5.11.48 (55^th)

Hugh Mc Carthy Swim 31.20 T1 8.43 Cycle 2.38.20 T2 1.25 Run 1.55.20 Overall 5.15.10 (62^nd)

Aoife Nash Swim 36.24 T1 9.19 Cycle 3.09.47 T2 1.42 Run 1.45.26 Overall 5.42.38 (132^nd)

Miriam Byrne Swim 38.23 T1 9.30 Cycle 3.21.55 T2 1.40 Run 2.08.04 Overall 6.19.32 (213^th)

Alison Rooney Swim 34.50 T1 12.32 Cycle 4.01.07 T2 2.47 Run DNF

It should be noted that while Alison didn’t manage to finish the run, this was only because she had marshal after marshal asking her to stop, there is no doubt that she would have breezed over that finish line with a smile on her face. Roll on next year Alison!