Irish endurance rider Joe Barr has been forced to call a halt to his record attempt on the Wild Atlantic Way route, joking in a post-race interview he felt “suitably battered”.
Barr, who spent last night in a hotel in Limerick having
abandoned his race against the clock, said that along the 2,343km north to
south route, which features 23,231 metres of climbing, there was an “unusual
depth of cold”, which ultimately proved too much this time.
“For me as a rider, when you spend that volume of time at
that level of cold, there comes a point when your body’s had enough, when it
needs time to recalibrate,” he said.
“And that’s where I got to when we were heading towards the Cliffs of Moher,” Barr (61) added of the conditions and exposure to the harsh elements catching up with him in Co Clare.
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While he was doing the event to break the world record, he was also fundraising for Belfast boy Zion Cassidy (2) who needs life-saving treatment for cancer and you can still donate to that fund by following this link.
Barr said when he left Oranmore he began asking himself "am I winning or is the race winning" and by the time he got to Kinvara "the race had won, this time".
The former road racing professional turned endurance rider
was forced to call a halt to his race yesterday when he had already ridden 76
hours, covering 1,350km and 1,300 metres of climbing.
Barr said when any rider took on a major endurance race
there was an element of courage required and even when it didn’t sometimes work
out, which was a feature of endurance, a lot of learning was accrued during the
events.
“You have to ‘fail forward’,” he said, of the getting
better and wiser even when goals don’t work out, adding he now had a much
better understand of the Wild Atlantic Way route and the nature of the
challenge it posed.
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“One of the upsides about this race is the education I’ve
been able to take away from it, even this far. I understand the sectors much
better now. So I’ve learned a lot from in the last three days from this race. I’ll
be back to do this race again.
“When you look at many of the other records I’ve done, with most of them I had to two them twice because there’s a learning aspect when you take on something like this; and the unknown element of it.”
Barr said he felt like he would “never get out of Donegal”
at the start of the race and this, he said, reflected a clear feature of the Wild
Atlantic Way course. He now knew that during this route you could wind around a
county and coastline for a hard day’s riding and not feel like you’d move out
of the area when you started many hours earlier.
Because of that, this was a challenge that he now knew
would involve having to recalibrate his mindset; away from any rider’s default
mental position of wanting to feel like they were moving a big distance when
they had put in a lot of hours on the bike.
“It’s an incredible course and we’re going to need a bit
of time to take down the notes from it,” said of his usual post-race analysis
of the data and his race experience generally.
“But this particular race brings a completely new element
to how you perform physically, how you perform mentally and how you position
those two aspects in the correct place at the correct time. Because, really,
that’s the key to you moving forwards towards the next sector.
“So understanding all the sectors is very, very important. And I know enough know to know that there’s four, maybe five, significant changes that I would make to overcome this race. And that’s what intrigues me and that’s why I know I’ll be back.”
“I have to accept failing forward. But the bit that I’ve
done to here has been very, very enjoyable because every aspect of it asked
something new of me.”
More later.
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