Comments on: Irish Adventure Racing: Gael Force West 2008

By: conor o'donoghue

conor o'donoghue — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:00:54 +0000

any advice for the mountain biking stage?… road bike with cyclo cross tyres? Or mtb with half slicks?… if walking the off road section is a necessity, how much time would be lost?…
any tips for the reek?

By: Eoin K

Eoin K — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:48:01 +0000

Only got to read this now. Well said Paul and Bob. It would have been hard to guess that they would manage to make GF12 any worse, but it looks like they’re going to do it. I would say GF is the “largest AR in Ireland” mainly in terms of the wasted potential.

By: Paul McArthur

Paul McArthur — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:45:32 +0000

I think they have spoilt the GF12. The format now is basically two 6 hour stages, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday (lovely long rest in-between). This may make it accessible to more people, but with no 12+ hour overnight stage it has definitely taken the adventure out of it. The GF6 may be nice to do for everyone, but not at the expense of losing a great adventure race that was GF12. When I heard the organisers were going to reduce the length of the GF12, I was expecting a 24 hour race (a perfect weekend race), similar to the highly successful Beast of Ballyhoura. In previous years 72 hour may have been felt too long for some people and so put some potential racers off, but it is a great stepping stone to the longer races like the An Turas Mor. However the problem with the last two yearâ€™s GF12 was it was held on the worst weekend of the year â€“ kids back to school â€“ nightmare trying to get the time off. Reducing it further to this current format is a bad idea and now with only The Beast as the only 12+ non-stop hour race in Ireland, the GF12 will be sorely missed. (Iâ€™m not counting the An Turas Mor ). I vote to bring it back and make it a 24 hour classic adventure race. The 400-600 people can keep their GF6 and if they donâ€™t think theyâ€™re ready for a 24hr race â€“ then they never will be. Giving them an extra 6 hour day is not going to give that authentic AR experience.

By: Aisling Coppinger

Aisling Coppinger — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:18:08 +0000

Their movie on the front page is good too. You can spot a few familiar faces there!

By: Robin Blandford

Robin Blandford — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:59:21 +0000

Their website is nice :-)

I’d like to enter this one….

By: Aisling Coppinger

Aisling Coppinger — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:17:24 +0000

Hi Bob, I’m not that familiar with the GF 12 from last year so I’m not sure what they’ve changed. It says on the website that they:

“decided to make the GF12 more accessible to more people, in terms of skill level and time commitment, at the same time as allowing those GF12ers who want to the ability to compete in GF6″.

We can’t all be super adventure racers like you, ya know! ;-)

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:49:30 +0000

Seems like the GF12 has been really cut down. Bit of a pity, but must certainly reduce organisational nightmares. Last year I stumbled around on top of a ridge in the dark looking for an abseil much to dismay of organisers! I guess ‘largest’ means most participants. GF6 certainly gets the numbers.

I guess that will leave the Beast of Ballyhoura as the only 24 hour race, and of course An Turas Mor as probably the biggest endurance challenge in Ireland this year.

I just did Ivan’s 2 day race near Castlewellan(http://www.causewaycoastar.co.uk/). It was a really excellent race - there was a few fun activities thrown in including some night navigation, an abseil and Rogaine activities too. Well done Ivan, Steve and team. Well worth checking out the rest of their race series.