This is the perfect time to just survive

Derval O’Rourke has spent the years since her retirement from athletics building up a wellness brand – and there’s never been a

better time to showcase it

After three Olympics, eight Championship medals and countless competitions in a 14year running career, Derval O’Rourke knows a thing or two about tackling tough challenges head-on. Yet the rigour of training and discipline for the Olympics is a different beast to a pandemicrelated lockdown.

When we speak over the phone, Derval is keen to know how I am dealing with social distancing and self-isolation restrictions. ‘Life is so contained now, I’m dying to hear about other people’s lives,’ she notes.

Derval, her husband Peter, and children Daphne, 4, and one-year-old Archie are living in Crosshaven in Cork, and much like everyone else attempting to battle the coronavirus, haven’t seen family or friends in weeks.

‘I’m finding it really challenging,’ Derval admits. ‘I think there are different subsets of people living through this – my parents are over 70 and cocooning and that’s challenging in its own way. They’ve never been as busy with phone-calls every night, but do they miss seeing their grandkids.

‘On the flipside, my husband and I are trying to work with a four-year-old and a one-year-old, and it’s like nothing we could have predicted,’ Derval adds. ‘For the first few weeks, it was a bit like being on holiday, but with work.

‘Peter is in insurance, and the insurance and finance world is pretty busy, so he was under pressure immediately.’

For Derval, staying upbeat and on top of things takes effort. ‘I’ve totally reduced my expectations of myself,’ she smiles. ‘I’ve reduced what I’m consuming online and in the mainstream media.

I’ll never be the mum that’s crafting away with her kids – that’s just not me. I tried it for two days, and it’s just not my mothering style.

‘I had mum guilt for a few days, but my children only care, like most other children, that you give them quality time. We have woods behind the house, so we can wander in there and make up stories, and she’s happy doing that.

‘I think I’ve identified a strategy – this is the perfect time to just survive,’ Derval continues. ‘Our priority is that the kids are healthy and happy out, then after that, our wellbeing is important.’

As it happens, Derval has spent the years since she retired from athletics in 2014 within the realm of wellbeing. ‘When I was running, I had this voice like, “remember this is a fickle career”,’ she recalls. ‘If you’re not running well, you lose funding and sponsorships, so I always had two things going on: what my on-track goal was for the year, and what my off-track goal was for the year. It was almost like living two separate lives.’

When an ongoing Achilles heel injury prompted Derval’s retirement at the age of 33, she had completed a Masters in business and attended cookery school. Two successful cookbooks followed her retirement announcement: Food For the Fast Lane and The

Fit Foodie. Derval probably didn’t know it at the time, but all of it ended up as the cornerstones of her latest and biggest business venture, the wellness website Derval.ie.

‘I didn’t struggle with leaving that life because I had positioned myself to do other things,’ she explains. ‘I knew I would write a cookbook, but I couldn’t have predicted the site.’

Partnering up with Greg O’Gorman of the Kilkenny Group, Derval’s lifestyle venture was borne out of a genuine love for wellbeing and food. Enlisting a number of experts, Derval posts recipes, fitness plans and snack ideas, and oversees a member community of several thousand people. It is not, she notes, a weight loss website.

‘It’s funny, a few people had pushed me into trying to go down the weight loss route, and that never sat well with me,’ Derval says. ‘I think life can be tough enough to juggle, why ram stuff down people’s throats about weight? Life is too short. I felt very strongly that the content on the site would be expert-led, but positive. I’d never want anyone to feel like they’re not reaching a goal.

‘I’m very confident in the product,’ Derval says, revealing that membership is €7 after a free seven-day trial (frontline workers are now being offered free three-month memberships). ‘I don’t promise things like “you’ll lose this weight” – people want to feel better, not because they were guilted into doing anything.’

After lunching an app and a revamp, the site is celebrating its first birthday, and frankly the timing couldn’t be better. The whole world appears to be waking up to the appeal of working out and keeping well at home during lockdown. In the last few weeks alone, 20,000 home workouts have been completed on Derval.ie.

‘It’s funny, I’ve spent a year trying to explain that it’s actually quite doable to do exercise at home – you don’t need a gym or a structured environment for it to work,’ Derval reveals. ’I also became very time poor when I had kids and was working, and we don’t talk about that enough as women. We’re not magical creatures but we put too much pressure on ourselves to be.’

For people experiencing mental health challenges, emotional days or motivational glitches in the current climate, Derval and the site’s online community (via a private Facebook page) are on hand to offer support.

‘I’ve become more a user of the site than a manager,’ Derval explains. ‘I’m doing stuff on there every day, or else I’d lose my reason. I feel I have to get about 30-60 minutes [of exercise] done, or I’ll struggle and start to feel a little claustrophobic and stressed.

‘We all have bad days, and in the private group people always try and pick them up, which has been really nice,’ Derval notes. ‘Right now, the number one bit of feedback from members is

‘OUR PRIORITY IS THAT THE KIDS ARE HEALTHY AND HAPPY OUT, THEN AFTER THAT, OUR WELLBEING IS IMPORTANT’