Starting in a woods on high ground near Castlegregory, the course drops down before beginning the long slow climb up over the Conor Pass. Coming at roughly 19 miles and at roughly 400 metres above sea level, the Conor Pass is no easy run. From there, it's downhill to Dingle at roughly 24 miles to begin the 26.2 miles of the Marathon course.
The Ultra starts at 7am while the full and half start at 9am. This means that for the Ultra runners, by the time they get to Dingle the half and full runners will have long gone. For someone doing an average of say 9 mins per mile, they are roughly 96 mins behind the field by the time they reach Dingle. It's likely that the only people they will catch are some walkers or really slow Marathon runners later on.
Probably not everyone's idea of a fun day but it might appeal to someone! In 2010, there were 45 hardy souls ;o) .........The Dingle Ultra-Marathon is on the 1st of September 2012.........More details on the event website.
Slight correction, there were 45 finishers in 2010. I think they had just under 60 starters.
ReplyDelete(and I caught up with a surprising number of walkers/runners. It's not quite as lonely as you might think)
u giving it a shot john? btw anybody wanting to read a excellent account of what it's like to run the dingle 50 you should log onto thomas's excellent blog(john's being the best in cork ;-)
ReplyDelete