Sonia O’Sullivan: Let’s celebrate our marathon riches

It’s a shame that such a positive story for Irish athletics was this week dragged into a slagging match in certain pockets of the media. The Irish Olympic marathon selection for Rio – on the men’s side anyway – was always likely to be a difficult and in some cases disappointing call, although not something that needed to be aired in public.

Having more than the three permitted athletes qualified should have been something to celebrate, but instead it created an air of negativity: I’m certainly not going to add to that, except to say that some of the reaction hasn’t been very fair, on both the athlete that was selected and the one that wasn’t.

What it does mean is that the bones of the Irish athletics team for Rio have now been nominated. The full quota in men’s and women’s marathon, along with the men’s 50km walk, makes for nine athletes, more than 50 per cent of the complete Irish athletics team currently qualified for Rio, now just over 70 days away.

On the global stage, you can sense the increase in performances, even if it’s relatively early in the season. Although nothing is too early now, which is why it surprises me that there have been very few rumblings from Irish track athletes this season.

Confidence and self-belief

A few may be cutting it fine, Mark English and Thomas Barr especially, not by choice but due to recovery from injury, which has put a hold on any thoughts of early season races. Even though that’s not ideal, it’s not impossible to fine tune things right up to the opening round of the Olympics, even though this takes considerable confidence and self-belief.

Sometimes this can be a blessing in disguise, if an athlete can use that pressure to ensure every race counts, push themselves to another level through each race they run. There is certainly no room for error with this approach.

I’m asked a lot these days about how I think the Irish athletes will get on in Rio, and it’s not an easy question to answer. I don’t have an insight into specific training and preparation, so can really only judge on recent race results. Again, there’s not much to go on this year, as for most, the best results are their qualifying performances from 2015.

As an athlete I always liked to know where I was at. The only way of doing this was to race, give myself a test of progress, which can help build confidence in training, but also in the ability to race athletes that you are likely to face in the early rounds of the Olympics. Beat them and you know you have their measure.

Instead, the only Irish athletes really measuring themselves have been the marathon runners, who up until this week were not certain of their Olympic destiny, and also the walkers, who took part in the recent World Cup event in Rome.

When you line up for a race, you’re always looking for a positive result, but this may not always happen. It’s all about testing yourself, getting some feedback, knowing maybe you’ve some issues to get sorted out and overcome before launching onto the Olympic stage in August.

If or when things don’t go well, however, it’s harder to hide these days, when in many cases you have to provide answers not just to yourself but to all your followers on social media, who were cheering you on and wishing you well just days before.

It’s not for everyone, and I’m certainly glad Twitter and Facebook weren’t around when I was competing. There is a certain energy you can get from knowing people are behind you, wishing you well. The only problem is that they don’t go away when the results are not delivered. It’s not so easy to just return to base, take stock of things and get back on the horse, without being aware of the talk that goes on.

Doubts and questions

On Monday, I took Snowy, our dog, for a walk, and took that time to listen to one of my favourite podcasts,

An Irishman Abroad

with Jarlath Regan, which this week featured Rob Heffernan. As usual Rob was very open and honest, reflecting on his recent race in Rome, where things didn’t go nearly as well as he’d hoped, filling his head with doubts and questions.

All the training he’d completed throughout the winter, and the great sessions he’d done away from his family at altitude training, were suddenly all forgotten as a result of one bad race.

I could resonate with much of what Rob was talking about. You think you’ve done everything right only to find something is missing, and before you know it the master plan is in disarray. It’s not easy to face the public when you are in the trough of the rollercoaster, let alone to do an in depth interview.

Yet Rob agreed to the interview, and in the process started to heal himself. It’s sometimes easy to hide away and hope things get better, although the sooner you can accept the negative thoughts, talk them through, the sooner you can walk confidently out the door again.

It seems so simple looking in from the outside, but when you reach this point of turmoil, it’s hard to see the positive in anything. You question everything.

It doesn’t take a lot to redistribute the mental balance, and if you’re a fit athlete, training at such a high level, you suddenly realise these little blips along the way are just that: little reminders that to get the perfect result the balance must be right.

Finding that balance is not always easy, but best way of doing it is to test yourself, discover any potential faults, then use all that as positive energy and momentum to drive on and get that one step closer to Olympic success.