A quick race report on the amazing suffer-fest that was the Lost Sheep Middle Distance Triathlon 2026, by Stephen Jones.
I signed up for the iconic Lost Sheep in Kenmare just a few weeks before the race as I was 50/50 about doing it due to an ongoing Achilles strain that still isn’t quite 100% sorted yet, but in a moment of FOMO and stupidity I pressed enter and I was now ‘doing’ the race. My 3-week 70.3 training plan consisted of 3 hilly cycles and getting from 10k to 17.5k on the flat, nowhere near where I needed to be, but with a positive attitude and a full bag of jelly babies I was going to go ahead with it, with the main objective of getting a banana at the finish line!
The Swim (1.9k):
It started off very well with a pancake flat sea and the first 850m out to the first buoy was nice and relaxed and I was drafting off a decent sized group of swimmers. The 200m clockwise across the top of the swim route to the next buoy was also fine ….I was thinking to myself that this is the best swim ever, but I did notice we were being pushed a bit to our left (out to sea) as we turned at the second buoy and headed for home but I was still going smoothly still drafting off a small group of people. With about 500m to go….disaster…. I quickly realised that despite still swimming ok I wasn’t making any progress to the last yellow buoy/swim exit and I was now on first name terms with the marshal in the kayak beside us and I was getting tired.
My right calf then fully cramped due to the kicking effort I was now making, thankfully due to the Pulse OW sea swimming on Monday nights with Fergus and Ant I realised I was caught in some form of rip tide/current and I needed to change something or a DNF was inevitable and I decided to veer left diagonally by about 20m and managed to get on the feet of about 5 or 6 other swimmers and we all inched our way like ants to the last buoy and exited the swim. I swam 2k in total and was about 6 or 7 minutes slower than last year but I was just happy to be out of the water as I joined the other shattered people in our group and we all walked to our bikes with lots of heavy breathing as we needed to recover for what was ahead of us.
The Bike (83k, two mountain passes 1,100m elevation):
Starting the Lost Sheep bike course being exhausted from the swim wasn’t really part of the plan and halfway up the Healy pass I was seriously questioning my life choices. Thankfully, after a bit of nutrition (Kellog’s raisin bake bars) and steady pedalling I hit the spectacular switchbacks on the far side of the pass and the regular Thursday night Pulse spin classes with Kevin were in my legs and I started to recover a bit at about 30k- 40k in. The Caha pass was long but very manageable however there was a wicked wind waiting for us at the very top of the pass for about 3k, and I was truly delighted to reach the famous tunnel at about 63k and it was all downhill for the last 20k with the wind behind us. With about 5k to go I hit a massive pothole and heard a loud metallic bang a few seconds later followed by a worrying ‘clanging’ sound and the bike was now vibrating a bit, but I decided not to stop to check it out and pray to baby Jesus that I would make it back to T2. It turned out that I blew a spoke in the back wheel and it buckled but thankfully the other spokes beside the broken one didn’t break and I made it back after around 3:30 hours on the bike.
The Run (21.1k, 290m elevation)
The run was always going to be tough as I didn’t really have the miles in the legs with my 3-week prep, so bluffing it a bit was always part of the plan. The first 7k were so tough due to the murderous hills but thankfully from 7k-16k are somewhat downhill/flat and I was then motoring along nicely sipping gels and munching on my jelly babies. The hill at 16 to17k is so steep (similar to Chapelizod hill) that the vast majority of athletes powerwalk it, so I adopted that tactic too and then took on the last 4k/rolling hills sufferfest of the run. The tops of my thighs were now starting to cramp badly, and I started to laugh out loud when I remembered that fellow Pulser Joe Sweeney was livid with me last year for saying that it was ‘all downhill’ after 17k to the finish line, a bit of karma for him/me. A few more jelly babies and some stretches and I was back running again and I then realised that I might break 7 hours if I ran the last 3k without stopping, so coming down the last hill back into town I was on fumes and I saw the finish line and had a few high fives and cheers from fellow Pulsers and I dashed for the line eyes bulging not sure if I was actually going to make the newly created sub 7 hour target.
In a sprint finish, I crossed the line at 06:59:52 which got a good cheer from my fellow athletes at the finish line, a little bit slower than previous years due to the tough swim at the start and the lack of training time banked but I really didn’t care. After I received my ‘finishers’ banana from the race marshals, fellow Pulsers Austin Cooney and Ciat Joyce bundled me into the back of a waiting van ‘A-Team’ style, and we grabbed our bikes from transition and hit the pub that evening for some well-deserved refreshments!
What an epic course with staggering scenery, a definite bucket list race that I will never do again…… although I did say that last year… :)
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