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Displaying items by tag: The Race

#Kayaking - It's been two years since David Burns and Maghnus Collins completed their epic 16,000-mile, 292-day Silk Roads to Shanghai adventure by foot, bike, raft and kayak.

They became in the process the first people to navigate Asia's longest river, the Yangtze, from source to sea by kayak.

In the meantime, they've kept their ambitions closer to home, but no less adventurous – starting a gruelling 24-hour challenge in the rugged landscape of Donegal simply called The Race.

As SportsJoe.ie reports, The Race is no ordinary race. Think a triathlon – running, cycling and swimming – but swap out the swimming for kayaking, add on an extra discipline (in thus case climbing) and cap it off with a full marathon run through the night.

All in all, competitors must cover a distance of 250km within 24 hours. And amazingly, there are some who can do that with hours to spare.

Take Canadian athlete Ben Wells, who set the record of 15 hours and 22 minutes in last year's race, and believes that even that time can be beaten in this year's even scheduled for next weekend, 7-8 March.

But for most of those taking part, only 10% "will be aiming to win it," says Burns. "The rest will be testing themselves against the course.

"The camaraderie was massive last year - everybody was willing the next person on, giving encouragement. We're expecting the same this year."

SportsJoe.ie has much more on the story HERE.

Published in Kayaking

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago