Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail

Trail Route

Fri 8th Feb – 11.0km Recovery Run
Eventually I managed to rouse myself to go out again last Friday for a short recovery paced run. I took it nice and handy but there was a recurring pain through my right groin but this only happened once every couple of minutes. Managed to survive it for 11km in total.

Sat 9th Feb – 42.0km LSR Run
Back at Christmas time I had intended to tackle the Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail as an end of season blowout. Instead, I got a flu and was laid low over the holidays and never managed to get around to doing it. So, seeing as this weekend was free I decided to give it a go. I knew I was not up to the required fitness but thought I’d see how I’d get on anyways and that if everything went well I’d hopefully make it to the finish.
The trail travels from my local town of Balla all the way to Croagh Patrick. Somewhat unusually it terminates approx 200m from the St. Patrick statue on the lower slopes of the mountain. In fairness, the last thing you’d want to do after 61km is climb the Reek! I had expected that the route would be approximately 80% on-road surface and the remainder off-road on bogs, trail and fields. This was my first mistake!

Information board at the trailhead in Balla

I set off at 8:30am on Sat morning from ‘the Square’ in Balla and immediately I was in amongst the mud. The next few kms was a matter of dodging puddles and streams and dancing across bogs in a bid to avoid getting soaked so early into the run. After about 5km I was back on solid road again and this lasted all the way to Clogher before again veering off into random fields as directed by the little yellow man - more swampy conditions! Across several fields and I was out onto the road again and before long I had reached Ballintubber Abbey. I was feeling good at this stage and at 16km into the journey this represented the end of Day 1 in the annual 3-day walking trail which takes place every March.

Trail path near Drum

The next part of the journey took me along tarred roads for a few kms before traversing a bog for a short while. This was, like the rest of the off-road segments, full of water! Across the main road and I was back onto bogland once again and the ironically named Killawalla Mountain – The only mountain I ever had to climb to 'descend'! It is in fact more a low mound of bog. 

Eventually I got to the village of Killawalla and about 2 miles later managed to meet up with my brother for some supplies at the 31.5km marker. I was fading at this stage as all the muddy, boggy ground had taken more out of me than I’d expected. I changed watches at this point as my Garmin was fading faster than me! After re-starting there was a 1 mile section of road where the sun even managed to poke out for 5 minutes! 

The beginning of the end for me...

A right hand turn into a wooded trail meant more sodden ground so I began walking more and more through here, partly to avoid the puddles but mainly because it was slightly uphill. The longer the road continued the steeper the incline got until about two miles later I was summitting a hill about 100m high. By this point I was done for and the legs were well flogged. I was also low on energy so anytime I started running the HR went through the roof while attempting to burn off enegry from fat!

There were lots of stiles and gates to be crossed!

I decided that the last mile down into Aghagower would be where I finished it today. I could probably have continued on for most, if not all, of the remainder but that would have meant walking the majority of the 19km left and there would be no fun in that. Instead, I had already started contemplating a return match in the Summer once I get a bit of free time in June or July. Hopefully at that stage I will manage it all  the way to Murrisk!

Major thanks to Mairead in the CPHT office who supplied lots of detail on the trail route!


Sun 10th Feb – 7.4km Recovery Run
Managed to get out for a leg stretcher after yesterday's run. Felling pretty good in general apart from a tenderness in the middle of my left quad. Just a typical dose of DOMS though and should be gone in a day or two.

Week 6 Summary:
RTW:  3 from 7 days
DTW:  60.4km
DTY:  436.9km