The Glenmalure Try a Team adventure race was the first race of the 2023 season.
To say I was excited about this race would be an understatement. This racing format began here in Ireland in 2022. Because I had no navigation experience or knowledge, I didn’t take part. With this in mind, I decided to take part in some orienteering events over the winter and learn the basics of navigation.
When Adventure racing Ireland (ARI) announced the Try a Team Adventure race in February 2023, I knew this was for me and I couldn’t get signed up quickly enough. However, I now needed to get a teammate. Thankfully Damien who has also done a few solo adventure races decided he would team up with me 
( a decision he probably regretted halfway through the race 
).
Finally, the day arrived and we were on the road at 6 am to Glenmalure. After we signed in, fueled with coffee and food, it was straight in to start marking out the control points on the map and deciding on the best way to approach the race.
A quick breakdown of how the race works.
- It’s similar to orienteering in that you have to reach a control point. Some of these are mandatory and some are for bonus points.
- For the endurance category, we had 6 hours to reach as many controls as possible. However, you lose 10 points for every minute over the 6 hours, so it’s better to finish under the 6 hours.
- Each control point has varying values according to the difficulty of reaching them. So a handy control might be worth 30 points, whereas a difficult-to-reach control may be worth over 100 points. So again you need to weigh up the pros and cons of which controls you go for.
Racing summary
After reviewing the map, Damien and I decided to hit all the early bonus controls after Transition 1 (TA1) and see how we were doing for a time when we reach TA2. This decision resulted in us being the last team to reach TA1. One of the stewards warned us that we might be tight for time, but we had a plan! which was to go for two mandatory controls which result in a lead over many other teams by the time with reached TA2.
From there on we just hit all of the mandatory controls and took in one more bonus control before reaching TA3. Here, we needed to leave the bikes and head up Croaghanmoira for the last mandatory control. We now knew where we stood with our time remaining, so we decided to pick up 2 more bonus controls before getting back to the bikes.
From TA3 it was nearly all downhill to the finish, but with 30 minutes remaining, we went for one last control on the way back to the finish. After getting that we were back with over 15 minutes to spare.
Final thoughts on team adventure racing ..
So that was the race, but what I didn’t mention was the smile on my face for the day and still as I think back on the day 
.
What an experience. This is “proper” adventure racing. Having to make decisions on the fly, employing tactics, taking your teammates into consideration, and avoiding going over time all make the day so unique.
I love solo races, but you can just switch off and follow the arrows. When you have to choose the route and possible obstacles on each route it really changes things up. Also, the first Team across the line isn’t necessarily the winning team.
I can honestly say if I could only choose one format of racing for the rest of my life it would be Team adventure racing!!!!! I’m already thinking about the next race and what I can do in the meantime to improve my performance.
As always if this is something you can see yourself trying, I’m more than happy to sit down with you and formulate a plan.
Thanks again to my teammate Damien for putting up with me for the day .
