Iseult O’Donnell shocked Ireland’s athletics community this summer at Morton Stadium when she secured gold in the 800m and silver in the 1,500m at the National Track and Field Championships.
Having endured constant injuries throughout her college years in Trinity, now some five years since graduating and only recently returned to the sport is O’Donnell beginning to scratch her full potential.
After only scraping a qualifying spot in the final by being the fastest loser in her 800m heat, O’Donnell was brutally self-critical when providing her retrospective to the commentator after the race. “I am some idiot”, she exclaimed.
The following week at the National Championships, as the athletes jumped up and down to pump themselves up for a highly anticipated 800m final, O’Donnell looked slightly dwarfed by the rest of the runners. A casual spectator not knowing much about the athletes would likely not predict O’Donnell to be the winner if judging with their eyes alone.
Indeed, she was far from the favourite. Names such as Amy O’Donoghue and Claire Mooney were mentioned as athletes expected to be seen crossing the finish line first.
Since I was a child I was always kind of running around the place
But a little over two minutes later, O’Donnell’s perceived obscurity and a poorly run heat soon became an afterthought, as she and her coach Feidhlim Kelly had drawn up a strategy that would see her break through in the final 100 meters of the race and gracefully coast to the finish line.
As the commentator put it, her sudden effortless burst of speed to cruise to victory would make it seem as if she had only just joined the race in that last 100 meters.
O’Donnell admits that winning this National Championship was the proudest achievement of her athletics career to date, though she shies away from hanging her hat on it, noting that there were several top guns who weren’t able to make it out.
All that aside however, the ongoing story of O’Donnell’s journey toward the top tier of women’s track athletes in Ireland is marked with plenty of ups and downs, and it goes all the way back to her early childhood: “Since I was a child I was always kind of running around the place”, she says.
Primary school sports days are memories which O’Donnell reflects on fondly as her first taste of racing: “That was kind of my first instance into athletics but it’s not as if I really understood it as being athletics or anything like that. It was just kind of an opportunity to run around and just kind of see who was the fastest kid in the class.”
“When you’re younger as well the girls and boys are kind of fairly matched so you’re able to challenge the boys at that time, up until obviously 6th class when there would be some differences.”
When O’Donnell was just nine years old and eager to play Gaelic football, the lack of a girls team at the under-nine level wouldn’t deter her – she happily shared the pitch with the boys.
Sport was a constant throughout O’Donnell’s childhood and in her younger years in particular, competitive running was just one out of many sports she embraced.
“I guess the first sports I played were the Gaelic games – GAA and camogie I started when I was about nine. But I also played basketball for Portmarnock and I did Judo as well. There was also a bit of soccer thrown in there. So yeah, I played a lot of sport.”
It was in secondary school when O’Donnell devoted her attention to just two – camogie and running. Training times for her club the Raheny Shamrocks clashed with Judo and a decision had to be made.
I just found with running you’re accountable to yourself and the work you put in should come out as a success for yourself
Feidhlim Kelly, O’Donnell’s athletics coach back then and still to this day, nudged her down what would turn out to be the correct path: “Ah don’t worry about the judo”, he said. “Come down and do the athletics instead.”
But O’Donnell was also showing serious promise with camogie having been selected for the Dublin under-16 team. Yet nearing the end of secondary school, she decided for herself that running was what she wanted to pursue exclusively.
“I really enjoyed the team aspect of camogie and I always enjoyed the craic that we had but I just found with running you’re accountable to yourself and the work you put in should come out as a success for yourself”, O’Donnell explains.
“Like the input should see an output, whereas, if you put an input into a team sometimes the same thing doesn’t come out”, she continues. “Not that it has anything to do with my team back then but with athletics you are kind of accountable to yourself and you can see yourself striving and progressing and that’s kind of what drew me to athletics.”
When O’Donnell began her time at Trinity to study engineering, she immediately joined Dublin University Harriers and Athletics Club (DUHAC), but things didn’t turn out as well as she’d hoped on the sporting front during these years.
O’Donnell consistently faced injuries throughout college – in her first year at Trinity she suffered a stress fracture of the tibia. “That was kind of the story of most of my college years. I’d manage to make it back again in the summer but then I’d get injured again in the winter and it kind of just happened to be that way.”
As far as developing her talent as a running athlete, that was put on hold for the most part while in college: “So my competitive nature of athletics kind of dwindled towards the end of my engineering degree.”
But, maintaining a glass-half-full attitude, O’Donnell still remained active with DUHAC on the social side of things and even became captain of the club in her third year. She notes with resounding gratefulness, the kindness and welcoming nature of DUHAC: “It’s a very unique group because it’s not just the performances that are celebrated but the people are celebrated and the relationships within the club are celebrated.”
“We just kind of became like a family”, she adds.
Because of her injury, O’Donnell would have to do plenty of water running as part of her rehabilitation program, and with that, “DUHAcqua” came to be as other students in DUHAC joined her in running up and down the pool: “Whether I was actually doing any work I don’t actually know”, O’Donnell jokes. “But it kind of kept me sane doing it with the other members of the group. So that was another way in which DUHAC was great and I came out with friends for life there.”
I definitely did not do as well on erasmus academically as I would have been doing at home
Despite all this O’Donnell would get back in gear, and when she went on her Erasmus to Milan in fourth year she got back in contact with her coach Feidhlim Kelly who was able to draw up a training program for her from afar.
“It was going quite well actually and the reason it was going well was because I realised I had more time in Milan to devote to doing more running, so I definitely did not do as well on erasmus academically as I would have been doing at home.”
In keeping with the up and down trajectory of her athletics journey, O’Donnell was once again forced to put it on the back seat the following year after another injury and the fact she had begun her academically rigorous mechanical engineering master’s degree. After graduating, a long-hours and high-commitment job at ESB also meant there was little time to devote to the intense training needed to compete at a high level in athletics.
Throughout this time, O’Donnell would keep at the running on a casual basis as for her, as it is with many, running was also therapeutic: a way of blocking out all the noise around you and just staying present.
“Like with running, you can just go out the door and focus on that one aspect of action you are doing and I think that’s the biggest thing about sport – focusing on the moment and focusing on the action that you are doing right now.”
“It’s like a therapy – it’s meditation for some people. It allows you to focus on the moment and I kind of find that that’s therapeutic for me anyway”, O’Donnell continues. “I think our world is obsessed with focusing on the future and what’s next and then being anxious about the past, and then you kind of get lost.”
I think that’s the biggest thing about sport – focusing on the moment and focusing on the action that you are doing right now
“It’s about understanding that it’s moment to moment that we should be living in”, she adds.
Living in the moment is a philosophy that has stood for O’Donnell well in these last two years as she decided, after a long hiatus, she wanted to go back to competitive athletics. To do so however, having the time was key, and that was all of a sudden made available with her new job as a research engineer at Trinity, working 30-hour weeks.
Having the ideal circumstances in her work life is, according to O’Donnell, the key in allowing her to unlock her full potential: “Being happy in your work is really important because then it doesn’t create stress for you. Like the more you can take away stress for you outside, the more you can grow in athletics because athletics is a stressor itself both in physical and mental terms.”
“So the more you can allow yourself to grow in that area and not be stressed in other aspects of life, you’ll grow better in athletics or whatever it is you pursue yourself.”
O’Donnell acknowledges that one of her proudest moments was when, having come back after such a long time away and putting in the effort, she ran a personal best for the first time in eight years – 800 metres in two minutes and six seconds.
She easily could have quit or just had it as an aside keeping fit but chose to try and put herself in the right positions
But for O’Donnell, her ceiling is yet to be reached and there is no intention of slowing down. Two minutes and three seconds is her next target for the 800 metres – a time she believes is well within her grasp.
Kelly echoes this confidence in his trainee and what the future has in store for her: “Developing her fitness and confidence has been key to developing her natural talent and if she can keep putting together another few years of relatively uninterrupted training then she can get closer to international level and make a major championship.”
“She easily could have quit or just had it as an aside keeping fit but chose to try and put herself in the right positions”, adds Kelly in an email.
“The main thing is she loves what she’s doing and will be able to look back and say she has done the best she can and put herself in the right positions to do that”, Kelly continues. “A lot of people say they could have done this or that but don’t make the decisions to reach their potential. They are afraid to find their limits. I’m sure Iseult won’t when she stops running competitively and can bring that forward into the rest of her life.”
For O’Donnell, with anything anyone pursues, it’s the moments along the way that ought to be valued most: “It’s a long process of development and that’s why it’s really important to enjoy the process and enjoy the journey”, she says. “Really enjoy the athletics, enjoy the relationships you make, enjoy the people around you and have a good life.”
“Like go out and have a burger, have a beer, a pint. Make sure that it fits for you because if you want to be your best in the long run you can’t live a restricted life”, O’Donnell continues. “Like obviously you want to do well but it’s not about the end goal – it should be about the relationships and the process you have along the way.”
