It took more than three days by bike but by the end, four Kildare riders had finished first in the race around Ireland
IN order to achieve something superhuman, Ken Bagnall had to become sub-human.
At the end of a 2,200km trek around Ireland by bike that took 78 hours and 39 minutes, Bagnall had almost become a body without a soul.
“It was like your brain just shut down and all you could do was cycle,” he says, recalling the final stretch from Mount Leinster in Carlow to the finishing line in Navan, Co Meath. There, along with his three teammates Ray Keegan, Richie Byrne and Gavin Doyle, they were the first team home in the Race Around Ireland but amid the euphoria and the exhaustion, they had been struck dumb.
“A lot of people mentioned the fact that we weren’t able to speak,” says Bagnall, laughing about it all now. “The mind was scrambled from the lack of sleep – it just wasn’t working right at all.”
They logged hundreds of hours on the bike in the lead-up to their mammoth endurance challenge but they hadn’t prepared for the event on a sleep diet. Physically their bodies were perfectly primed but their minds were massacred by the exertion.
“Gav (Doyle) was seeing things a little bit,” says Bagnall. “I just wasn’t really able to think.”
In their quest to finish first, they had broken into two groups – each duo cycling for a six-hour stretch while the others rested in a camper van. Their bodies got a break during their off-road stints but their minds were still on high alert.
“It was hard to get to sleep. It could have been any time of the day when you were supposed to sleep. It could have been 1pm and you’re told now is your chance to sleep. You’d get up an hour before you were due to cycle again so you’d only get about an hour of sleep each time. I got five hours sleep, Gav got three.”
By the end, they would have slept standing up yet the route got easier the further they went. On day one – Sunday, 15 September – they travelled through a storm along the north coast past the Giant’s Causeway, beyond Ballycastle as far as Bushmills. Facing them were some of the most scenic views in the country but with a 30-knot wind for company, there was little to admire.
“You were cycling as if you were doing 50kmph when you were doing 20kmph. So you were killing yourself and going nowhere,” says Bagnall. They were lashed again by the elements along the coast road from Limerick to Tarbert but the Ireland of Angela’s Ashes often gave way to an overwhelming beauty. At times, it was like travelling through a dreamscape.
“You’d hit an eerie, empty, lonely valley and it would just be amazing,” says Bagnall. “When we came across Connemara, it was just gorgeous. We were going along this old, bog road in the dark and suddenly we had the wind behind us for the first time and those real, wooly Connemara sheep were asleep on the road (they sleep on the road because it’s warmer). You only had the light from your bicycle to guide you through. It was the most bizarre atmosphere. There was a full moon as well and these wooly boulders in the road.”
It would have been easy to forget that this was a race as well as an endurance test except that their nearest rivals – Chaindriven Cycles from Sligo – kept close enough to remind them. Bagnall’s team had calculated that they could maintain a certain speed and heart-rate from start to finish so while they sacrificed the lead during the first half of the race, their strategy paid off as they hit Kerry.
“We kind of broke them in Sneem. They were 6km ahead of us and in the first 30km we caught them and passed them. They never caught up again. They managed to stay within 20km of us until Mount Leinster in Carlow and then we went again.”
A fall on Slieve Mish failed to unsettle Bagnall and by the time he reached Kenmare, the opposition were in sight.
“When I passed their (Chaindriven) guy around Kenmare, I tried to have a chat with him but he couldn’t speak at all. He was wobbling around and his shoulders were going. He probably thought I was being rude trying to chat to him at all. I think he just couldn’t talk.”
Knowing they had the race in the bag turned the final stretch, from Mount Leinster to Navan, into a victory parade. Fellow members from Naas Triathlon Club lined the final stretch in Co Meath but when they crossed the finishing line, a strange feeling washed over the all-conquering foursome.
“It was very weird because we’d been in this constant state of panic for three days and now it was over.”
The Naas crew returned to Navan on Wednesday evening – 18 September – but the last man home in the solo category, Christian Krause from Denmark, didn’t reach Navan until Saturday after 144 hours in the saddle. By then Bagnall was almost back to normal.
“I came into the office (Bagnall is MD of The Email Laundry) the next day and I didn’t know where the hell I was. For the week after I definitely wasn’t at the races.”
The euphoria has long subsided by now but they were cycling for more than just self-satisfaction. To date they have raised €8,698, money which is badly needed by the St John of God services at Celbridge – where Bagnall’s sister, Jenny, is a patient.
“They’ve got low on funds to a frightening level,” says Bagnall. “Other charities have a high profile. Lots of people in Raphael’s are brutally brain-damaged. They need constant hands-on care. It’s not glamorous.”
Neither was the pursuit of victory in the Race Around Ireland but then Bagnall knows nothing worth doing is ever easy.
*You can still donate online to support the team at: http://www.mycharity.ie/event/naas_tri_club_race_around_ireland_team/
