After finally touching down in Dublin one of the first things that struck us was the pace of the place. The Irish people are themselves quite laid back, however as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car it’s game on. The speed limit of 120km/h on the motorway seemed to be treated as more of a guide than a law. Cars flew past us like we were standing still. Later on we would find ourselves driving along windy dirt roads only wide enough for one car that had a limit of 80km. And it seemed that the default limit was 100 for any sealed road no matter how narrow. You would think that given the people were driving so fast everywhere that things would happen like clockwork. Not so. We were introduced to ‘Irish Time’. If lunch was set down for 1pm, you might eat sometime around 4pm. Daylight would hang around til at least 10pm so there didn’t seem a rush for anything to be done straight away.
The people were fantastic. We stayed in a small village called Letterfrack and the whole place seemed to be based around eating, drinking and laughing. Our first night we had dinner at a pub Paddy Coyne’s in a neighbouring villlage called Tully Cross. We didn’t pay for a thing directly. That would all be fixed up at the end of the week. So it was like we had just dropped in to a mates place for a bite and a beer. That mate’s name was Gerry and if there wasn’t a race on later in the week we could have stuck around until 5.30 in the morning which is when Gerry finally called it quits after telling a thousand stories and solving the problems of the world. The next day we were back there for lunch and dinner and each time a few more countries were turning up. We met Canadians, Americans, French, Dutch and Argentinians at Paddy Coynes as excitement built throughout the week.
In the two days before the event a few official events took place. One of these was the opening ceremony. All countries carried their flags and as they were introduced everyone cheered for each other. The whole thing had a great atmosphere. One of the biggest cheers was for the Sherpa from Nepal(see photo below). He came second at the previous World Champs and has also represented his country at the Winter Olympics. His only concern about the run was that it looked like the course was too ‘flat’ for him this time. We had to laugh as we had already walked up part of the course the day before and it was brutal.
The other event that we found interesting was the technical meeting for all runners. This is where information was given and questions answered about the run itself. In a very Irish style, rules were made up and changed back and forth on the spot here. This didn’t sit well with some of the more ‘serious’ European nations. Things were getting a little tense until the Australian runner broke the ice with his question regarding the order of tables set aside for countries at check points. Had the organisers put Australia right at the front because they thought they would probably win?? There was laughter in parts of the room and it rippled around to other parts on slight delay as the humour was translated into other languages. It wasn’t to be the last time that this ‘crazy’ Australian was to entertain the rest of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment