Training - Mweelrea and more

It’s been a while since my last blog. Time has been hard to come by these last few weeks. We are 4 weeks out from the challenge and the training has been going great. Last Friday 4 of us ventured up to Mweelrea in Mayo. This was the first time any of us have done this hike.

It’s a 10km out and back hike. Parking is usually at the Silver Strand beach car park but we found a place a km closer in order to trim off some time on our hike. Mweelrea will be the 3rd hike we will be doing on the day after a 5hr drive from Slieve Donard. The goal of doing each of the hikes is to see exactly what we are in for on these hikes and to see the time we could save doing the hike.

So off we started. It is a very boggy hike for about 2 thirds of the hike. Considering there hasn’t been much rain the last few weeks it was still quite surprising how wet and boggy it still was. The soft underfoot did make it more difficult to climb and the calfs were burning from the off. We couldn’t see the top of the mountain as there was a cloud sitting on top. The views behind us of the Atlantic and beaches were amazing.

There isn’t really a visible trail for most of the hike so AllTrails app was a blessing to help us get on track if we wandered off a bit. The wind was strong for a lot of the hike too and was directed head on to us. It didn’t help with the hike. Once we got into the cloud it was more solid ground and we easily made ground here.

All in all it took us 1.5hrs to get to the summit. We had a quick photo, a bite to eat and headed down again. we made great time going down. 50mins to get back to the car so we got it all done in 2.5hrs. I am allowing us another 30mins as this will be our 3rd hike and our legs will be very tired doing this. After we went for a quick dip in Silver Strand beach to help the legs recover.

Coumshingaun Lough

A few weeks back I brought 3 others down to Coumshingaun Lough. Again we were blessed with amazing weather for it, although there was a lot of ice on top of the hike. We made it around in great time again and took a nice break by the lake after.

The plan for the next 3 weeks is to up the training a bit and then leave the last week to rest and stretch.