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Not content with stepping in at the deep end and taking on Donegal Ultra 555 as his first proper cycling race this weekend, Ciarán Breslin is also riding the grueling event having recently had Covid19.
The 36-year-old father of one from Navan, Co Meath, told stickybottle he was “totally floored” by the virus over a period of two weeks, between late July and early August.
However, having recovered relatively quickly he decided
to press on with his plans to ride this weekend and got his 555km effort around
the testing roads of Co Donegal underway early this morning.
“I registered for this race around the second week of
June,” he told stickybottle on the eve of the endurance race.
“So I was training away for it and the training was going
really well. I felt good and I was following the plan my coach set out for me.
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“And then on July 22nd I was due to get up and
do two hours on the bike before work. I had the alarm set for 5:30am but when
it went off and I got out of bed I thought I was going to faint,” he said of the
virus hitting.
“I was really weak and didn’t know what was going on; I had to shuffle out to the toilet, I couldn’t even walk any faster.”
He coughed up mucus and decided to skip training, go back
to bed and call in sick to work in the Meath Enterprise Centre, Navan, where he
fills the Covid19 compliance officer role.
“I was doing everything right… I was the guy wearing a
mask back in March and I still go this,” he said of taking extra precautions
from the start of the pandemic due to the nature of his job.
On the day he woke up feeling unwell in July he decided
to organise a test for Covid19, though at that point he did believed he had a
milder bug rather the virus. A test was organised within two hours and two days
later he was contacted to say he’d tested positive.
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“It was a total shock. No-one came forward to say I was a
close contact, the (Covid19 tracker) app didn’t activate. It was a bolt from
the blue. On that day there were 24 positive cases in Ireland and I was one of
them; a total shock to the system.
“I was really bad for about four days; from the day after
I got the positive test result for the next four days it was just awful. I
couldn’t get out of bed; couldn’t get my head off the pillow. I also couldn’t
eat anything; I had a total loss of appetite.
“But my major symptom was chronic, and I do mean chronic,
fatigue. I’d never felt anything like it, it just completely wiped me out.
“It didn’t go into my chest, thankfully. And when I look
back I’d have to say I got a mild dose, but it still completely wiped me out.
It’s serious; this is a serious, serious virus.”
He said after recovering, after a total illness period of
about two weeks, he eased himself back into training. However, while he was
able to resume his cycling, he said his heart rate remained significantly
elevated even after he felt well again.
“When I was sitting on the turbo trainer for the first
time after 13 days, I pedaled and I just could not control my heart rate; it
was gone. It was like I was sitting on the bike for the first time.”
That continued up until last week, though Breslin said he
re-organised his training and he believed he had recovered enough and has
sufficient training done to take on the race today and tomorrow.
He had a fall while training five days ago and he
instantly feared that crash, rather than Covid19, was about derail his plans,
though he suffered no lasting injuries.
Breslin is riding the 555km event as a solo rider, but
with two back-up vehicles as only two people are permitted in each vehicle due
to social distancing measures introduced as the race is being run during the
Covid19 pandemic.
“I’m hoping to break the 26 hours mark, so that would
mean finishing around 9.30 on Saturday morning, something like that and I’d be
happy,” he said.
The Meath man comes into the race as a complete
new-comer. Though he competed in a 24-hour endurance event last year, the
Donegal Ultra 555 is his first cycling event apart from some Navan RC’s club
races.
“I’m nearly doing things backwards here,” he joked of
taking on such a long and hard endurance race as his introduction proper to
bike racing.
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