Aodh races across the Sahara – just for the craic

AODH Ó Curráin from Baile an Fheirtéaraigh plans to kayak from Dingle to Valentia next month. It would be a lifetime adventure for most people but, for Aodh, it’s an outing.

In fact he doesn’t even have much interest in kayaking.

Two weeks ago Aodh took part in the 250km Marathon Des Sables adventure race in the Sahara Desert. The six-day, five-stage event in which competitors carry their food, clothes and camping equipment on their backs, has been described as “the toughest foot race on earth”. There’s good reason for this description: The heat and terrain is brutal, competitors can be disqualified if they’re judged to be too exhausted to keep going, and if they get lost in the desert they have to pay the search and rescue costs. However, the organisers do provide insurance to cover the cost of “corpse repatriation in the event of death”.

Aodh came 79th out of the 1,300 competitors in the race and says he was “happy enough with that considering I don’t do multi-stage races”.

In fact Aodh says he isn’t especially interested in running ultra marathons at all.

Last November Aodh cycled from Sydney to Perth in Australia, completing the 4,000km route in 20 days, despite temperatures that reached 46 degrees. After that he took a break and cycled around the south island of New Zealand. Aodh isn’t hugely interested in cycling either. He has also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (5,895m) and Mount Aconcaqua in the Andes (6,960m).

Mountain climbing isn’t really his thing though.

But behind all this running, climbing, biking and gentle kayaking there does lie a burning ambition: Aodh is in training for the Ironman Wales contest and he hopes to go on from this to qualify for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii in September 2019.

So, in the hope of earning a place in what is described as the most prestigious endurance race in the world, Aodh took on the Australian cycle by way of bike training, the Marathon Des Sables in the Sahara was to improve his running fitness. And kayaking across Dingle Bay – well that probably is just an outing.

Aodh wouldn’t agree that there’s a touch of masochism in all this. ‘Adventure freak’ is a description he could live with, but the real explanation is: “I just do it for the craic”.

“If you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, you develop and grow and gain the ability to tolerate situations… It seems totally normal to me,” he says.

Needless to say, the craic will be only mighty next November when he cycles across the United States, from Orlando to San Diego. And it’ll be a dream come true if he manages to get the money together for the €20,000 entry fee and the €40,000 – €60,000 cost of a boat to row from the Canaries to the Caribbean in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge in 2020. But that’s a long way down the road. For now, Ironman Wales is what it’s all about.