Conor McKeown won the recent Castlebar GP after suffering a lung issue for a year without realising it, all while balancing his cycling with life as a ploughing champion (Photo: Eamon Bracken)
Conor McKeown (Moynalty CC) may have taken his first win of the season recently, after a 60km solo breakaway, but the Louth man has been through the ringer of late. After getting in a three-week training camp in Spain, the switch from the warm conditions back to cold and damp Ireland triggered a bout of pneumonia.
McKeown - a four-time national ploughing champion (more on that in a moment) - also suffered a collapsed lung. Though he was bedridden for three weeks, that bout of serious illness led to the discovery of a year-long lung condition that took hold, silently, at last year's Rás Maigh Eo.
"It was an underlying issue that I had since last March at Mayo," the 26-year-old said of fluid being discovered on his lungs during his treatment for his collapsed lung and pneumonia.
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"I got a viral infection after that last year and I had (fluid on the lungs) all year. Every morning I'd wake up and I'd be coughing and coughing.
"And since (getting recent diagnosis and treatment) I've felt an awful lot better on the bike. I'm probably able to breath maybe 10 per cent more than I was because I had the fluid sitting on the lungs."
Conor McKeown is a four-time winner of the National Ploughling Championships; a more intense and time consuming sport than you may think
An intense round of medication and rest in bed for three weeks cleared up his health problems. And the weekend before last he won the Castlebar Grand Prix with a solo attack of just over 60km.
"I was delighted, I felt I had it in the legs," he said. "I was three weeks abroad in Spain and I came back the start of February and I had the pneumonia for three weeks. I only got back on the bike 10 days before the season started. So I didn't do any intensity until March."
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His recent illness aside, McKeown also mixes his cycling with his work as a crop specialist. He walks farmers' fields with them and offers advice on how to grow whatever crops are coming out of the ground.
From a tillage farm himself in Dundalk, Co Louth, he is also a four-time national ploughing champion. It's an apt sport for a man born on St Patrick's Day.
McKeown is only the second man to win the Irish U28 title four times. The first to do that was Eamonn Tracey from Carlow, the reigning Supreme World Ploughing Champion.
But if you think ploughing is just a hobby, think again.
"The way I describe it to someone, especially in cycling, is 'the more you put into it, the more you get back'," McKeown said. "The All-Ireland Championships for us is in September. I generally start training the week after the Kilmessan weekend (in early August).
"And then it's pretty much the same routine as the cycling, it's pretty much three or four hours every day. Saturdays and Sundays are two long days, where you're in the practice field making small adjustments.
"So you might be practicing your straightness, how well it's ploughed, how uniform everything is that you've done. Then during the winter months, you're in the workshop working on the plough itself, so it does exactly what you want it to do.”
With a full time job that takes him all over the north east - walking up to 15km per day - ploughing titles to win and defend, and a cycling career to pursue, how does he find the time?
"It's literally just a question of time management. And my coach Luke Smith is great. He understands it, he understands where I'm coming from and we communicate well," McKeown said.
"It's just a matter of trying to judge everything and work around everything. You might get in a two-hour spin in the morning before work (then) go to work and come home and do the ploughing. You're squeezing it all in the whole time."
