Mullaghmore Race Report

Tuesday, June 21 2005 @ 06:50 PM IST

Colm writes in with a race report from Mullaghmore in Sligo this weekend.

Sligo has an under commented prettiness I discovered at the weekend - maybe its the other counties on the way there from Dublin with the lakes and the hills - not sure. Anyway, I rolled into Mullaghmore at 11:00 on Saturday for the 2:30 race. It was spitting rain early on but only for a minute or two, and stayed dry until after the race. Mullaghmore is a small near-island peninsula custom made 250,000 plus years ago for triathlons with 5k runs. The sailing club sits on the eastern edge overlooking a sheltered bay that is fed by the Atlantic. This was my second ever tri (after Limerick in April), my first ever in open water and, given that I swim like an underpowered automatic going uphill, I had some butterflies...

I ran into Rory in the sailing club after registration and a small Piranha shoal of 5 or 6 ended up going for coffee a short way down the street (hot chocolates not being available yet in downtown Mullaghmore). As race time neared people headed off to do their own preparations around the transition area. Made a mental note to myself not to forget the MP3 player next time as a chilling out aid. But sitting on the grass in transition eating a chicken sandwich looking out on the bay and Benbulben on a warm June afternoon made a fine replacement. Still needed to go back to the car 3 times for stuff I forgot though. Its amazing how time flies before a race.

At 2:30 pm over 200 of us assemble on the slipway in front of the sailing clubhouse, like un-evolved penguins, a bevy of black rubber and white caps. Everyone seems remarkably chilled and I exchanged good luck glances with a few as I made my way to the back of the bunch to avoid any early melee. The gun starts the race and the first 30 yards of water resembles a real piranha fish feeding frenzy. The water surface cascades with staccato white water from swimming limbs. I hear a bunch of people at the back involuntarily exhale a 'j*sus!' exclamation. In seconds a 3 yard breathing space appears before me and I make for it and am on my way. The swim seems to go fine, I even pass a couple of people. At the buoys a couple of people swim across me (I mean literally across me) but I stay relaxed and even laugh that something Neil O'Brien prepared me for on Wednesday comes to pass in the race and is no hassle at all. The last part of the leg back feels pretty long though. Then I realise that I have lots of space around me. So I look around on a breathing stroke to find very few behind me, and they're mostly doing breast stroke. Feck it! I'm slow. I struggle out of the water, take a look at my watch and see 19 minutes have passed. There goes my gameplan. I was hoping to finish in 1:29 but this would have required a 15/16 minute swim. The next couple of minutes are filled up with transition business and slowing my breathing down again.

Then onto the road for the cycle and I'm thinking whats needed to catch up the time for my target finish. This kind of minutes and seconds maths is hard enough when you're standing still, never mind pedalling in open country. Anyway, I pass a few bikes in the first few K (and plenty more pass me too) although the stretch that brings us up on to the N15 Sligo-Donegal road is a rhythym sapper. Going along nicely now at 30 plus kph, 40 plus in stretches and I start thinking that maybe my average speed is good enough to claw back some lost time. At the end of my first lap doing 40 kph Mary passes me doing 50 kph on her second lap! The turn for the second lap wasnt marshalled at the time so I shout at a Garda (Hey, isnt is funny how this 1st person present tense race reportage has kind of caught on recently?! I blame Steve Cleary myself) to point me the right way.

On the second lap the run down from the N15 has me going at 50kph, which is pretty cool until I remember that my bike is ancient and how I noticed 5 minutes before the start that the back wheel was severely squinted over towards one of the back stays. I grip on for dear life. As I come in to transition 2 some of the top runners are just finishing and the race director looks a bit frazzled and gets me to virtually stop before letting me continue for the last 300 metres (I get why the race director might be frazzled later on). Strangely the relatively high bike speeds havent done enough to help my target time (still dont quite understand what happened here...).

Anyway, I head out on the run around Mullaghmore Head. This would be scenic if you were fresh but I'm not! Theres a 1 to 2k incline in the middle, coming up towards the tower castle ruin which looks westwards out over the Atlantic, and my right knee starts sending out its 'what have I told you about running on roads' pain alert. (I make another mental note not to nervously swig water in the hours before a race). I get through this by maintaining a steady rhythym and some other distraction techniques which I'm not at liberty to discuss here (bless her)! My race ends in 1:31:50. When I said the rain held off for the race, it then dumped down for about 2 short minutes after I crossed the line. But I didnt mind so much and besides, it was warm rain. Plus it lasted longer than the water in the sailing club showers!

Time to catch up on everyone's race progress afterwards, and there were burgers and salads for the participants in the sailing club. It transpires that lots of Piranhas did really really well, including a 2nd in the mens section and 3 out of the top 5 females (see results below) but unfortunately a bit of a marshalling mistake affected some cleancut results. Most were happy with their race, viewed it as a good prep for Kilkee next weekend (not me - too scared!) and said they'd happily do Mullaghmore again (just not that evening). As a rookie I further discovered that one key to a really excellent recovery is going out for a top class dinner and pints with the crew afterwards!

Colm

Firstname	LastName	Swim	#	trans1	Cycle	#	trans2	Run	#	Overall	#
Eimhin	McManus	00:11:00	6	02:14.2	00:31:22	4	34.6	00:18:26	8	01:03:37	2
Elena	Maslova	00:15:26	77	01:11.0	00:34:29	30	36.7	00:19:53	31	01:11:34	27
Loraine	Creane	00:13:03	26	01:19.8	00:36:45	69	37.7	00:20:05	35	01:11:49	28
Mary	Horgan	00:12:44	18	02:02.5	00:37:49	86	41.9	00:20:44	45	01:14:01	38
Rory	Cawley	00:15:46	91	01:47.0	00:36:38	67	01:02.6	00:21:31	57	01:16:44	61
Emily	Ennis	00:14:36	54	01:24.1	00:38:03	89	50.4	00:22:35	80	01:17:27	68
Jim	Gilmartin	00:15:27	78	02:20.3	00:38:18	93	01:15.1	00:23:04	94	01:20:23	88
Colm	O'Connell	00:19:49	170	03:05.0	00:43:16	164	50	00:24:53	127	01:31:52	161
Alan	Vale	00:19:49	171	02:54.6	00:43:01	158	01:34.3	00:25:46	146	01:33:04	166

Related Links
Link to Triathlon Ireland and full results
Photos from the race

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