Joe O’Leary was destined to achieve a podium position in this 2024’s Montane Spine Race. Originally from Kerry and currently living the Mangerton area, Joe is no stranger to mountains and rain, the key ingredients for the notorious Spine Race.
Joe won the 2024 Montane Winter Spine Challenger North and took over 16hrs off the existing course record.
This is the story of his 2022 race in which his defining third place position in the Challenger event set him up for success in this year’s race.
This article originally appeared in the the Irish Runner Magazine – print edition in 2022…
Hard as Nails
Joe’s journey to running started with an unconventional turn of events. After spending years as an amateur rally car navigator, he found his fitness was lacking and started mountain biking in the dark winter evenings.
“I used to do rally navigating in stage rallying for 15-20 years and I suppose that my first or second proper rally that was a multi-day rally and afterwards my body was sore all over so I decided I needed to get fit, I was 25 at the time.”
Joe bought a second-hand bike and started training in the evenings, alone. It was only after a few of his buddies asked him to go mountain biking together that he discovered a deeper appreciation for training in the mountains.
Soon, Joe started to take his athleticism more seriously and started competing in mountain bike racing such as the Irish Cross Country Series. His running at this stage comprised of ‘pretend running up Mangerton’ which Joe described more as fast hiking.
His love of competing eventually drove him to a mix of events, and once he started taking his running more seriously he found he was sharing his time between mountain biking, road racing and now, running.
His weekends quickly became hectic and Joe would often find himself doing a marathon on the trails of Kerry on a Saturday and then a mountain bike race on the Sunday.
“I had to decide between them and went into the mountain running.”
Joe’s ultra debut came in 2016 when he finished 3rd in the Kerry Way Ultra Lite. Over the next few years, Joe’s commitment to running intensified and he was doing a lot of ultra-distance (typically longer than 50km) trail events.
The Kerry Way Ultra became one of Joe’s biggest goals and in 2018 he made his first outing on the 191km course.
“I never thought I’d be able to do [the Kerry Way Ultra] and I thought these people were pure legends.”
The race is notoriously tough. It is a full lap around Kerry that takes in some of the most remote and technical trails that Ireland has to offer. As usual, the weather was wet and windy which made the course conditions even more technical. Joe finished in 28:57:04.
“I couldn’t believe how cruel it was running around in the pissing rain in the dark during a storm but I thought it was great craic while suffering unbelievably… Sure, it was pure Kerry weather so it was no notice to me,” he laughs.
Next, Joe set his sights abroad and took on TDS in 2019 and UTMB in 2021. TDS was his first big international race with 9130 meters of vertical squeezed into 146km. Joe predicted he would complete it in 28 hours and finished in 28:05:07.“My pace seems to correct itself and I tend to come in exactly as predicted.”
Then Joe managed to secure a last minute place at UTMB six weeks before the event but had a good level of fitness as he was already training hard for the Kerry Way Ultra and the fastest known time (FKT)on the Iveragh Traverse with ultra athelte and friend, Kevin Leahy. Looking back, UTMB was one of the highlights of his running career.
“It was a very emotional start, there was a fantastic atmosphere there but I think I started too fast and was feeling poorly at the first checkpoint, so I decided I would enjoy the damn thing as it was pretty spectacular. I put on an audiobook, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ that was nearly 19:30 hours long. I then headed out into the dark with a smile on my face and never looked back.”
Joe finished UTMB in 31:02:10 and was pleasantly surprised that his energy levels were good the next day and weeks following the event.
All of this was leading up to Joe’s defining podium finish at the 2022 Spine Challenger Race. Joe had attended the Adventure Race World Championships in Gallaecia in October of 2021 and then didn’t start back training properly until November, so there was only really six-seven weeks of a training block before the Spine.
“I was a bit worried I hadn’t enough vertical done and that I was rushing my training a bit and cramming. I did Torc mountain and Mangerton so I got a lot in over Christmas, doing eight days in a row and tapered for a week but it wasn’t ideal training. I had only done two speed sessions but there was no point in panicking as I will have to make do with what I had, end of story. But I had a lot done from the last two years.”
During covid, Joe had managed to keep a consistent running schedule which was also going to stand to him for the Spine Race. Joe’s average week since TDS in 2019 would top out at around 75 – 80km per week and his long run would be no longer than 30-35km.
Having some of the highest mountains in Ireland on his doorstep and the predictably, unpredictable Irish weather to simulate the conditions for the Spine, all played into Joe’s pocket.
“I did Carrauntoohill Christmas day which was good preparation because it was pissing rain and I was going up the Ladder [Devil’s Ladder] and there was a river of water coming down against [me], so I thought this is very Spine like, so we’re sorted.”
The Spine Race was everything the Kerryman thought it would be and in many ways harder as the weather was unusually cruel, even for the Spine.
“It was brutal, it is everything they show from the promo videos and pictures… I would look down at my feet and marvel at how bad everything was.”
A mixture of snow and rain had made the route treacherous and even more technical than it already is. Navigation became a game of trust with your GPS as well worn pathways were made completely unrecognisable.
“It was snow and slush up high and in the lower regions it was just mud and water… You’d go down three inches with each step. Plus all the gates you had to open, they’re worse than the Kerry Way. It was on a latch on a little hook and it was always on the other side so you had to try and figure that out and open it.”
At one point, the finish time Joe had set for himself began to feel out of reach. Not only had the conditions made the course more difficult and treacherous under foot, but the chances of getting lost or wondering off the trail were extremely high.
Joe slogged through but after six hours he began to predict that he would be 35-40 hours on the course. He had set a time of 30 hours as he predicted he would be longer than Kerry Way Ultra but less than UTMB.
He had been sat in third place for a while and had a good lead on the runner behind him. There had been some changes to the route due to bad weather. This led to a detour been put in place around Dean Clough after the route through the fourth check point, Wessenden, had flooded.
Joe missed this detour sign and confusingly, his GPS was not loaded with the detour on it so he followed the line through the flooded road which was comparable to river crossings he had completed before.
“It was the only detour not on the GPS, without it [the GPS] you would have ended up in France or somewhere. It would be pointing in a direction and you’d think there is no path up there but sure it would be covered in snow so I was looking for the footprints of the other two guys.”
As Joe and didn’t take the detour, which was longer distance wise, and the runner in second place did, a time bonus of 18 minutes was added to their time to make up the difference.
There was still a lot of racing ahead at this point and the hills kept coming and with them, technical descents on tired legs. By the time Joe reached the checkpoint he was feeling beat-up from the weather and a few tumbles he had taken. He remarked that he had never fallen so much in a race and having to carry a racepack that weighed around six – seven kg only made it all the more difficult to stay up right.
About half way into the race he thought his race was finished.
“At 73km in I thought I was going to pull out, it was just horrible and I couldn’t get my mind around it even though I would usually be quite strong that way. I know people say they want to pull out all of the time but when you’re feeling that way at a checkpoint it is very easy to pull out and hard to talk yourself out of it.”
After some back and forth with the volunteers and eventually one of the event’s doctors, Joe realised he had no real excuse to back out, so he settled for a cup of tea and headed back out on the course.
Joe maintained his third place position all the way to the finish and was about 50 minutes behind second place, with the closest runner to Joe nearly seven hours behind him.
“It turned out to be 30:30:47 which I was delighted with in the end but I could have went a bit faster If I had got my ass in gear quicker. I had kinda lost interest in it a bit and knew there was a good gap behind me and I didn’t feel as fresh as I did in UTMB where I could push on hard. Plus the conditions had got bad as well.
Joe’s journey to a podium in the Spine Challenger event was years in the making. His approach to running is simple and like a lot of ultra runners, he seems to enjoy the suffering that is implicit with the distances they traverse. Joe has several other ultra events planned this year and will be one to watch.
The Outpost 