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Galway has been Ratified

Race Report

To see some great footage of Galway Rat Race 2008, click here!

After days of wet weather, Saturday morning dawned bright and clear and the 1st Galway Rat Race urban adventure enjoyed great weather all day. The base was the recently reconstructed central icon – Eyre Square. Later, many competitors lounged in the Square fountain to cool off and clean up at the end of their day.
 
At 11am the prologue kicked off proceedings. For anyone involved with the Newcastle and Gateshead Rat Race the format would have been familiar; a ‘Norwegian style’ orienteering challenge where the description of the control you need to visit is at the location of the current control and you need to write it down or memorise the details. However, in the Galway Rat Race we took this concept a stage further by splitting the field into two and having them flow round the course in opposite directions with omni-directional control descriptions! We also got rid of the written control descriptions and replaced them with pictures of the next control. So, midway round the course competitors found themselves on the top of a multi story car park, looking at a picture of pier, staring over the edge and trying to determine, which of the Galway piers their next check point was. The correct one was over 1km away and just visible across the city skyline! This was Photo ‘O’ for the first time in the Rat Race.
 
Teams collected code letters from each check point to form a code sequence. Without the correct sequence you couldn’t get into the bike compound until 12noon. There were then 4 different adventure loops to complete. The first taking the Rats north to Mionlach and for a short kayaking adventure on the wide River Corrib before heading back to Eyre Square. At the end of each loop the competitors returned to Eyre Square and had 2 activities to complete. These included searching for a checkpoint in a ball pool, a horizontal bungee, filling a leaky drain pipe, speaking Gaelic Irish, searching for a SPORTident checkpoint in a pot of yogurt and space hopping up steps. Evil and fun, all at the same time!
 
Adventure Loop 2 saw the adventure racers heading over to Bearna Woods via Galway City Museum, Massimo Pub and the Salthill diving boards. The tide was racing out so only the leading teams got to jump off the higher diving boards into the sea, and lower boards were used for slower teams….phew! (Fortunately the weather was gorgeous). Arriving at Bearna Woods the teams had to complete a ‘Nightline’ blindfolded ropes-following activity and orienteering course.
 
In between all this frantic activity the teams had to keep their eyes open for the rare red leprechaun who was running round the city with checkpoint in his hand. If you had caught him by the end of the day there was a fifteen minute penalty and boy could this leprechaun run!
 
Adventure Loop 3 took the competitors east to Merlin Park Woods and the ruined Merlin Castle. Here they found Merlin the Wizard with tough riddle for them to solve. They could then dive into Merlin Park Woods proper to search for another CP before heading back to Eyre Square.
 
Some teams didn’t have sufficient time to complete the 4th Adventure Loop, which involved searching for checkpoints around the ground of the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). However, everyone still completed the nearby and unusual indoor abseil to complete in Eyre Square Shopping centre, down the old historical city wall tower, now encapsulated within the centre. Additionally they had the ‘Fox, Chicken and Corn challenge’ to complete at Steamer’s Quay. This re-created the classic riddle of how does a farmer cross a river when he has a fox, chicken and bag of corn but can only fit one item on his boat at once… obviously he can’t leave the fox with the chicken or the chicken with the corn. The teams had to solve this conundrum for real by transporting the fox, chicken and corn across a short stretch of water, whilst all the team were on their own kayak. Much fun, water and head scratching ensued.
The final Mean Streets Epilogue involved over 40 check points spread over the cities, with teams being penalised 10 minutes for each checkpoint they didn’t visit. This rounded off an amazing day in the vibrant city of Galway. Ireland West’s centre of fun and entertainment, and once again the Rat Race provided an ‘adventure ticket’ to access all the facets of yet another inaugural city. This is the sixth and concluding Nine2Five Rat Race, the first event in Southern Ireland, and the first ‘International’ Rat Race. The last event of the Rat Race Urban Adventure Series is London on 27/28th September. It’s still taking entries, and it’ll be the biggest and boldest Rat Race of the year.
 
Shane Ohly
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