Sonia O'Sullivan | Cobh 10 Mile Road Race | April 3rd 2022

Introduction

It’s been two years since it all went to hell. Yes this is referring to the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. I haven’t raced in two years. My last race was the CIT (Now MTU) 5k race on March 1st 2020. Everyone in the room for tea afterwards had a snotty nose, cold or a flu me included I was trying to sweat it out it had been 7 days since I stopped taking the antibiotics for a chest infection. I know what your thinking Andrew are you sure you didn’t have COVID-19? How would I know? I was familiar with the number of people coming in and out of the Mardyke Arena UCC I was responsible for a lot of them coming in to get some exercise and we were roaring thousands of visits a night, no mask mandate, no social distancing and I shook the hand of every older man in my rehab care I reckon it was 15 hearty handshakes a morning and that was before we got to afternoon meetings. That was a different time and it feels like an alternate reality.

Why 2 years later? Well, remember level 5 anyone in healthcare started living that way and staying away from crowds and then it was always about limiting contacts, getting vaccinated, watching the hospitalisations, waiting, assessing, baragaining and managing the two subsequent lockdowns whilst being on the frontline. I may have spent most of the pandemic manning our clinic reception and remotely coaching patients but I stayed away from road racing to me it was adding contacts and therefore adding risk to the clinic. I’m sure every race at the height of the pandemic did its best to mitigate the risk. It started to turn around at the end of July of 2021 parkrun called we had a return date in September. parkrun is no race but me and Julie had been there at the start of Glen River parkrun, the core team was intact, the Mardyke and NASC were stable….. it was time to get off our ass and bring it back. Way then lead onto way and it took until 18 days before our wedding before I felt the urge to race again.

Anyway getting back to the Cobh 10 Mile and staying positive I finished the Cobh 10 Mile in 1:14:45 and I kept up with Sonia O Sullivan and Rob Heffernan for 3 miles. This race was in aid of breakthrough cancer research. I help people rehab after cancer they need more help than you can possibly imagine. Click here to donate to breakthrough cancer research. If you need an added incentive my mother is a cancer survivor. I also studied the Chemotherapy and Pharmacology of inflammation and we need more scientists to chase down every cancer cell pathway and figure out how to stop it.

On the Cobh promenade with the finisher mug

The Course

My splits are below. The Cobh 10 mile by reputation is hilly and somehow my 10 mile PB is on the old much more hilly Cobh 10 course. On the course I used my training from Glen River parkrun to sprint downhill and that seemed to make up for the fact that we were out at a Gavin James gig the night before in the Opera House. It was one of our last dates before we say I do on April 22nd and presumably become boring, never go out again or do anything we loved before we got married even if we both liked it or fell in love whilst doing it. Anyway the new course is brilliant I have previously written about it here. If I manage to stay away from Rebel Red Ale and Gavin James next year a PB should be the order of the day.

Have a nice day !!!