I first heard about this event at the close out function of the Itera-Lite Adventure Race in Wales last year, announcing that it would be the host for the 2025 UK & Ireland Adventure Racing Championship. Having never really explored much of Ireland outside of Dublin, it seemed a good opportunity.

Stage 1..Adventurers Assemble!
Our firm, RSP Consulting Engineers, had 2 teams take part in the Buccleuch Challenge, a 7hr Corporate Adventure Race in September last year, there were therefore colleagues from work who had enjoyed what they saw and had interest in having a go at the sport. After a few discussions, setting up a WhatsApp group and Teams chat,…. and not really giving the opening to say “no..” a team was born!

Carol, having been part of the Itera-Lite team in 2024 and in for the Itera-Lite again in 2025, her experience and her strong sporting background would provide the drive and “can do” the team would need when things got tough. Carol had enjoyed navigating her team around the Buccleuch Challenge course and had just missed out on a podium spot. We would lead the navigation round the course.

James, his reputation as being strong on the bike had filtered through within the company, he had missed out on the Buccleuch Challenge, so was up for this event. James’s was earmarked early as being the person most likely to be carrying the Teams compulsory kit around the course, which would mean the procurement of a larger rucksack than the small lightweight one he had initially proposed…

Gary, he had taken part in the Buccleuch Challenge with me last year, had a back ground in MTB Orienteering, as well as regularly chasing down James in their cycling club in Glasgow. I knew he had the experience, stamina and the temperament to provide a valuable contribution to the team.

Myself, Alan, many years of Adventure Racing and still learning, especially navigation.

We had our Team ..Adventure This!

The organisers advised ” The Beast will be made up of several different stages where you will be going from one discipline (e.g. kayaking) on another (e.g. Biking) over the 24hours in the race.  Typically, on a 24 hour race you might expect 7 stages and you are required to stay together in your teams throughout the race.

Team adventure races do not follow a pre-defined course. Teams decide what route they wish to take from one control to the next on each stage. Teams can also decide what controls they wish to get, and which they may wish to leave out.

You will be racing through the night, and you can stop, rest and re-fuel at any stage as you will carry food and whatever you need with you during the race. Teams are also able to access team gear bags at pre-defined transition locations during the race.”

The week before we travelled to Ireland, they released the event schematic. This is principally to allow teams to organise food and kit. The schematic showed Full Course (FC) and Mandatory Course (MC) distances, what activities we’d do and what Team equipment bag would be available at the various transitions.

We studied the details and chatted through our key take aways, by allowing some rough timings from the start and from the finish, we were able to work out roughly where we’d need to be on the course to make sure we finished on time.
Stage 1 – 5km orienteer, fine. They use that to break up the field hitting the kayaks.
Stage 2 – a 24km kayak…ok that was possibly bigger than expected, especially for Gary & James, who had not spent too much time in a kayak. It looked like we’d be heading down a river as opposed to being bussed to the coast.
Stages 3-6, a mix of biking and orienteering / trekking.
Stage 7 – The full course of a 65km mtb looked a big ask given timings, we thought we’d maybe do mandatory only .
Stage 8 – A full course route of 58km ..that would surely be hard, probably unachievable for even the top teams, we’d have to call that when we see it.
Stages 9-Finish looked like a run back to the start.

Early Thursday morning we headed off to Ireland in Gary’s van to catch the ferry over to Belfast.

A slight delay to the departure meant that our planned 3hr drive took longer as we hit the Dublin bypass rush hour. However it was with great relief as we arrived at our base for the evening. The accommodation was grander than expected and we got to check out the alpacas that the owner kept.

We spent Thursday evening sorting out our kit into the various bags and weighing them to be ready for the next days final miles to Carlow, the base for the event.
At event HQ, we got our event maps, tracker, and team bibs at registration. and obligatory team picture.

The Race Director looked at Gary and said “I recognise you, you’ve done this sort of thing before, this will be no problem for you!” ..why hadn’t Gary told the rest of the team? This raised more suspicion when I saw another competitor doing a double take when Gary walked past.. Obviously, a mistaken identity, but it provided good banter as we went through final prep for the start of the race and marked up the maps.

Stage 1 was an orienteer around Carlow, as we huddled under the tent from a rain shower, another competitor walked up and said “nice buff”, I immediately recognised Phil Humphries, who used to organise Ace Races (Adventure Challenge Endurance) when I first started these events in the early 2000’s. He’d spotted the Ace Race buff I was wearing. His simple 3 word briefing at his events had stuck with me, “Make good decisions”, its all the briefing you need. It was really nice to chat to him and tell him how much of an influence he’d had on me.

A local dignitary counted own to the start and we were off, a looping run brought us to the orienteering maps, a few seconds to get bearings and then we were off around the town of Carlow, much to the surprise of the locals.
All checkpoints were collected then we started our run down the towpath towards the kayak transition.

We’d discussed the various combinations of who should be in what kayak and opted for Gary & James being in one, and Carol & I being in the other, principally so Carol and I could communicate checkpoint descriptions and where on the river we were.

The kayak had a number of weirs to negotiate, with the recent dry spell the river was lower than normal, on the first weir, the team in front us capsized and spilled across in front of us, our kayak flipped over and we were in. Carol went to swim for her paddle but found she still had her foot caught in the bungy at the front of the kayak, we got sorted out and righted ourselves and carried on our way.

It wasn’t only weirs we had to negotiate, there were several lock gates that required us to hoist up the kayak and carry it along to the river beyond. Some of these were high, which explained the compulsory kit item of a 5m long rope for each kayak. Carol and I could hear Gary & James in the kayak behind, a mixture of singing and banter, all positive, but kayaking isn’t their main sport , so Carol & I decided to tie them to our kayak to keep the kayaks together and improve our speed. The tables would turn later on the course.

As we reached the end of the kayak, nearly 4hrs later, we were really looking forward to getting on the bikes and away.

Into transition, changed what we could and took the food and drinks we’d need for the next stage.

Stage 3: On to the bikes, it felt good to be out of the kayak and on our way making progress down the Barrow Way, a towpath beside the river, as dusk fell into night. Bike lights on..

We stopped at the bonus checkpoint at an impressive viaduct, which was at the far end of a nearby town, one local, waiting on his pizza after his beers was clearly confused as to why all these bikes were riding up and down the high street.

We cleared the mandatory checkpoints as we headed towards the next Transition.

Stage 4 : Night Trek. The transition at this stage was up a relentlessly steep hill (one of the many we would see over the weekend) towards a forest car park. The trek continued this steep upwards fashion as we opted to stick to the mandatory checkpoints as we had to watch our time. The weather was pretty rough as we headed up to the top of Brandon Hill, not a huge hill at 515m but very exposed in the wind and rain that hit us. We made our way downhill to transition fuelling what we still had with us.

Stage 5 was a short 8km bike ride to the next transition for an orienteering section. We took the chance to get a hot drink and hot food after the chill of the hill and the MTB descent.

We had initially planned on doing the two mandatory checkpoints on the orienteering and one bonus CP, as we knew the longest and most demanding stages were still to come, however, we lost a lot of time here. We and a few other teams made our way along the course to what we thought was the start of the orienteering section, where we all were was just like the start of the separate orienteering map and couldn’t see the checkpoint, we walked on and nothing made sense as to what we then saw, compared to the map, after way too long we established that we were a few hundred metres short of the start of the orienteering course, hence why nothing matched. This delay meant we only had time to the mandatory checkpoints and quickly make our way back to the bike. No time to stop and refuel or restock food, we had to move.

Stage 6: A 28km MTB, we had to limit ourselves to the mandatory course to get to the next transition, but yet again we were met with a long steep climb out of the town. The route yoyo’d up and down the countryside as we headed towards New Ross, the most southerly point of the course.

The timing to the next transition was critical, we had to get there by the 7am cut off. It was going to be very very tight, we needed to stop for water but didn’t have time to. This was worrying me as we’d been advised at briefing there was no water in the hills as it had been so dry, if we stopped we’d miss the cut-off and be unranked. We left New Ross and headed back north, we had 4 more mandatory check points to pick up.

The closer we got the tighter it was all looking, but still doable, Carol spurring us on as we picked up the 2nd last CP. James took my rucksack to help keep the pace up, the last climb was yet another relentlessly steep one. James was pushing me up the hill (still carrying my rucksack) and Gary was pushing Carol up the hill, finally we saw transition and probably had less than a minute to spare. We had a minute to drop the bikes, change shoes and get out of transition, thankfully the organisers had brought some water to the transition so we quickly filled what we could before we headed out onto the hills.

Stage 8: Trek (Full Course 58km, Mandatory Course 20km). We quickly reminded ourselves what the route was to the first few checkpoints. We had less than 5hrs to trek 20km but with a load of elevation gain. I didn’t have much food left and felt that this was going to be tight for time.

Upwards we trudged up along the ridge of White Mountain, there were 3 separate peaks along the ridge, one had a stunning cross at its top.

As we made our way down, I turned over the map to see where we were going next…I looked at the map, looked ahead, rechecked the compass and realised we were heading back up another mountain, after losing all the height on this one first..obviously. This looked a beast of a mountain, and had a long northerly slope.

Gary caught me up and asked what the route out was, I nodded ahead to the mountain ahead, he groaned then mentioned he had just been winding up James by saying we had to go over that hill…ah karma..

It was a long steep climb up and I was falling behind the rest of the team but still moving and making progress. I needed my rucksack as it had the left over hydration bladder in it from the kayak at stage 2. It wasn’t exactly fresh but it was keeping me going as I rationed my remaining fluids.

The terrain was touch going as it was really rocky. The ankles and knees were taking a pounding as we made our way down.

Finally we hit the road, 4km to go, we knew we’d make the cut off but the longer we got in transition, the more chance there was to refuel, we were all running low now. We walked a bit, ran a bit along the road. We were being passed by other teams on bikes, they’d missed the trekking cut-off and would now be unranked and were subsequently moving along the course. Finally we made transition. A chance to refuel with hot food, hot drinks and change kit. We started to feel a lot better.

Stage 9 – MTB, we opted for the mandatory 20km bike and were making good progress, my morale was boosted after the fuel stop as we sped along the roads picking up the checkpoints on route. Gary & James noted that they maybe should have had some “Summit to Eat” macaroni cheese if that was the positive effect it had on me.

We got to Stage 10: A “Special Stage”, which we found out was a 2Up paddle board out and back along the river. Carol and I went first, James & Gary did the return leg.

Stage 11- Homeward stretch MTB. We opted for the 27km mandatory course as we had to be back by 4pm or face penalty points. We made good progress on the back roads towards Carlow, even though we were getting closer it didn’t seem to be, we twisted and weaved along the country roads as the clock kept ticking onwards.

In the photo above, I’m sure James was just patting Gary on the back for a job well done and in no way was he pushing him…(just to be clear).

Finally we got the last checkpoint and fought our way past the Saturday afternoon traffic towards the finish at the rugby club. We had a few cheers from the locals as we made our way along.

Finally the finish, and a beer from the local brewery, just what we needed.

We finished 9th in our category out of 23 teams.
Everyone bought into the team effort, which humbled me, as it always does. Gary and James pulling out the stops to get the team to that critical transition with seconds to spare, along with Carols drive and motivation, spurring us on to find that little bit more effort. We all had our peaks and troughs but the teamwork balanced them out.

Thanks to the organisers and marshals along the course as well as the local people who made us feel so welcome.