CGR12

The Clare Glens Race is back! After a years break Irelands best river race is back on the 6th or 7th of January. To enter email your name and mobile number to clareglensrace@gmail.com. Full details are up at http://www.facebook.com/groups/162734773768169/?notif_t=group_activity#!/events/197231460370500/

Freestyle Session in Tuam

'best freestyle spot in the country', 'perfect hole', 'coldest place in the world'. After all the good things I've heard about it I've been trying to organise a trip to Tuam for ages now but for one reason or another until this weekend it just never worked out. On Saturday though all the starts aligned, we got the ULKC Sprinter, we got a driver and it rained for a few days before-hand. On the way up I was afraid it was going to be washed out since there was so much water in fields in Galway but when we got there the level was perfect and everything was set for a sweet freestyle session. Its a really easy place to video too, you can just set up the camera and off you go, not like Gower where it would be 100% certain to get robbed it you tried that! So I got some sweet video, and with a bit of work a few hours and 6Gb of footage became this:



The other paddlers are Dave O'Sullivan and Ethan O'Brien. And a huge thanks to Paul Austin for driving the van up!

Flesk Race

Inspired by the Tarmonbarry rodeo last weekend Colin Wong decided to organise a boatercross race on his home run, the river Flesk just outside Killarney. Its a sweet river, about 2.5k of grade 4-5 water which is pretty sweet for a boatercross. Its a huge improvement on the Colligan and the Annamoe where boatercrosses have been held previously anyway! The format was simple, we divide into two groups and in the morning one group does rescue while the people in the other group take it in turns to do timed runs down the river, and then we all swap over, the person with the shortest time at the end of the day takes the prize money. I've only paddled the river once or twice before so luckily I managed to get a few practise runs in to try and memorise all the lines before the race.

This went well enough, I made all the major lines on my timed run but it was all the sections inbetween which were where the problem was and I kept hitting rocks, slowing my time down loads and pushing me back into 6th place, again. In the end Neil Slevin surprised everyone and took the top spot off Colin by 1 second, delighted for him! Paddy McGovern came 3rd and Toby Fischer 4th, and the rest of the field were just as solid paddlers, making it a pretty impressive field for any race. Afterwards everyone headed back for food and beer in Killarney, huge thanks to Snax for laying on a never ending supply of chicken nuggets, sausages and wedges!

Towards the end of the first gorge

The weekend before that we headed down to Kerry with ULKC to run the upper Carragh and the Owenroe. Even though the levels were low we had a good day out, and all the beginners did really well, with no swims all day! It made a nice change from the tedium of the ICU agm the day before, which was 6 hours of utter bull with one 5 minute toilet break in the middle! Katie Butler got some nice pics from the end of the Owenroe, which for future reference should not be paddled unless its raining and everything else in the area is tanking... 



Slide on the Owenroe

Get-off of the Owenroe

Tarmonbarry comp

A few weeks ago since things were fairly quiet in the country competition-wise Barry Loughnane and Andrew Regan decided to go out and organise a freestyle comp of their own on Tarmonbarry. The rules were simple with 15 minute heats, 5 people in each heat and everyones top 5 moves were added together to give their final score. The entry fees were split between the top 3 paddlers in each class, making it the first freestyle competition with cash prizes that I've even seen. The feature on the day was pretty sweet, even tho it suited hole moves more than wave moves, since it was really retentive and not really steep enough to get a decent bounce on. The Juniors were up first, with Billy Brett taking first place with a bunch of phonixes and mcnastys that would have beaten the majority of the seniors!

In the seniors Tom Dunphy showed that all the time spent in Canada and Germany hadnt been wasted, taking first place and the lions share of a decent prize fund. Close behind him were Barry Loughnane Ronnie Brennan who got to split the rest of the prize money. I finished up in 6th, not that bad but definitly hoping to do better at the next event.

A few pictures taken by Micheal Howard:

 I've had a few sweet sessions on Gower recently too. Clean blunts and backstabs arent quite there yet but I'm workign on it! Most of the time I was paddling on my own but Bowsie showed up for one of them and got some sweet photos: