The circuit is a new IMRA race being held for the first time this year. We all planned on giving it a shot as the route looked pretty epic. A recce would be required however. We didn’t get away until 3pm but the weather was good and we were in good spirits. Up the zig zags we went heading for the first checkpoint “the lake”. We made a mistake coming off the zig zags and ended up taking a path above the forest to the lake. The correct route into the forest would be marked on race day and correctly so. It definetly wasn’t clear on the Harvey’s map (is anything clear on that map!) After hitting the lake it was straightforward to Clohernagh, Lugnaquillia and Camenabologue. We were really enjoying the running on this section. We stayed high and contoured around to Conavalla across some rough terrain. We followed the same strategy across to Lugduff and caught a path on the ridge which would bring us all the way to Mullacor. Comparing notes with others who completed a recce and the race itself the strategy of staying high and not descending into the valley when approaching these peaks was correct. As we approached Mullacour I twisted an ankle pretty bad so this made the descent to the Ballinafunshoge – Track Junction pretty difficult. I had spotted what I taught was a short route down along the edge of a new plantation but this didn’t work out as well as I expected. We ended up coming off Mullacor wrong and had a difficult descent back down to the road. We were pretty hungry and tired at this stage. Overall it was a good workout and we got to see some amazing scenary (see photos here).