Reinventing herself as the fitness trainer from hell, The Voice Of Ireland hostess needs guinea pigs ‘to get their a***s kicked’. Our intrepid writer is soon wondering why she volunteered
ASNARLING Kathryn Thomas is going hell for leather, punching the living daylights out of me, while Eye Of The Tiger blares from the speakers. This isn’t a nightmare in which I find myself in some sort of Operation Transformation hell but it’s pretty darned close.
Kathryn, who stole our hearts when she showed real love to the leaders as Dr Eva Orsmond or Dr Ciara Kelly stuck the boot in during RTÉ’s weight-loss show, has gone to the dark side.
The TV star – who, it turns out, has a pretty mean right hook – has relaunched herself as Ireland’s Bootcamp Queen – inspired by bootcamps she took part in Vermont, Australia, India and Spain.
‘The idea came to me sitting over a glass of wine one night. I thought, “I’ve a couple of months off during the summer – I can do this.”’
So she hit the road with her restaurateur partner, 47-year-old Pádraig McLoughlin, and spent June, July and August scouting venues before discovering and falling in love with Inish Beg in West Cork. She hired a bunch of personal trainers, a nutritionist, a chef and a life-coach, secured sponsorship from the Great Outdoors, booked Inish Beg for six weeks and launched her Pure Results Bootcamp.
To kick it off, she thought a truckload of hacks would be the perfect guinea pigs to have their a***s kicked.
As someone who has not darkened a gym door since long before Christmas, I considered myself the perfect candidate. And what better time to start than a day after one of the booziest and boldest weekends of the year, my favourite, when gobbling chocolate eggs in the bed, and washing them down with lashings of red wine is a socially acceptable way to spend a Sunday.
It takes me a good five hours to reach the 97-acre private island estate between Skibbereen and Baltimore. It’s pitch dark when I arrive, so I don’t get my first glimpse of the shimmering river and undulating hills until 6.30am, when I rise for our ‘Kenyan Run’, a 2.5km circuit of the island’s periphery.
When I meet some of my bootcamp colleagues, I’m truly terrified. One has a fitness blog, one does yoga retreats and one is talking about hockey. There’s also a 6ft4in. behemoth of a man, with muscles as big as my head oozing out from under his Tshirt. He’s bodybuilder Mark Kenny, who placed fourth in the Mr Cork championships last year.
Kathryn, meanwhile, despite the unearthly hour, is throwing shapes on the gravel to warm up with the prowess of someone does bootcamps as a way to unwind after a hectic series of The Voice. What in God’s name have I gotten myself into?
We set off through the woods. The hazy water peeps through the trees and it’s so beautiful, I briefly forget I can’t actually run for more than 30 seconds without getting dizzy, a feat last accomplished running for a train. At about the minute and a half mark, my body remembers. I notice another girl is panting as much as I am and we fall back together. Praise Jesus – I’ve found a friend.
The smell of eggs cooking back at the Boathouse makes it worthwhile. Dietician Jen O’Callaghan is talking through the day’s menu with chef Michelle McCormack, a cheery New Zealander who wears funky floral aprons she makes herself.
The eggs are fluffy but there’s no toast and butter – just one slice of wheat-free bread. The strict bootcamp diet is wheat, gluten and dairyfree, clocking in at just 1,500 calories a day.
At 9am we follow trainer Dave out into the sunshine. We walk up from the waterfront through mossy meadows, pass under lush green leaf canopies and a picture-perfect lake. We walk along lawns dappled with purple crocuses while bursts of yellow marigolds peep from mossy verges.
We pass a garden with a glass-fronted swimming pool and steam room, where we’ll do water aerobics the next day, and pass through a gate into a field. My magical reverie comes to an abrupt halt the moment I spot the weights, dumbbells, balls and exercise mats, arranged in a circle, with instructions beside each station. I’ve arrived at ‘Circuit Training’ a ‘code red’, highintensity class designed to really put us through our paces, led by Mr Cork. I find the warm-up gruelling enough but then the real fun starts. We do 10second bursts at each station, upping the ante by 10 seconds in round two, up to 30 seconds per station by the third round. By the second round I nearly knock myself out with a dumbbell, get stuck in a squatting position and by the time I reach the exercise mat, instead of stomach crunching I can only lay there to soothe my trembling legs and aching abdominals.
It’s bootcamp, so I’m expecting to get roared at army style. But Dave is the loveliest trainer in the world. There’s no shouting, just firm but gentle cajoling and encouragement. I find it within myself to drag myself off the mat and complete the third circuit, blind from the sweat dripping into my eyes.
Next it’s assault-course time. As we run around the field for a warm-up, I lag behind, puffing and panting, only to realise a cameraman is filming the whole thing, to air on Xposé. Brilliant: not only is puddings here trailing about 50m behind the pack for my fellow bootcampers to see but now the nation can tune in too. I never signed a release form for this sort of exposure. Humbling is not the word.
The assault course – done in pairs – is ball-breaking. What’s worse, we are timed as everyone cheers us down the 200ft course and back again. We have to lug more than a dozen 15kg sandbags, 10kg boxes of ammunition, hop a wall, crawl under fishing nets and topple a gigantic tractor tyre before turning around and doing it all again. The winners come home in three minutes 14 seconds while we’re happy to even finish in just under five minutes before I collapse in a wheezy heap on the grass. I genuinely think I’m on the way out. But there’s no time for that. After guzzling some water, we’re straight into ‘Island Intrigue’ with another trainer, former ice climber, Donncha O’Brien – a lowintensity workout with quirky team-building games, a brilliant ice-breaker and bonding session.
Back at the Boathouse it’s snack-time – two oatcakes with almond butter, which is actually delicious, like a healthy version of peanut butter – and nettle tea. It’s ample fuel for our next highintensity code-red session – Boxercise, led by Kathryn and Robyn Fitzsimons.
Robyn reveals she only got into fitness three years ago after her father Damien suffered a heart attack and she hit the gym with him to get him in shape. Now he is fit as a fiddle and she is a qualified personal trainer, fitness instructor and competitive weightlifter.
I shared a nettle tea with this softly spoken, porcelainskinned doll-faced girl at snack time. She looks like Audrey Hepburn and is very,
‘We’re happy even to finish before I collapse in a wheezy heap’
very sweet – a most unlikely weight-lifter . But once the gloves are on, her sweetness dissipates as quick as the morning dew and she channels her inner mean girl, roaring at me to squat deeper to avoid Kathryn’s killer jabs. It’s an hour’s worth of utter agony and come the end, I’m flirting with the idea of feigning illness to get out of this once and for all. Usually boot-campers ease into the seven-day programme gently but as were only here for a two-day taster, we're packing much more in and I’m concerned I may have bitten off more than I can chew. For lunch, I wolf down the Asian fishcakes and salad and wonder aloud what’s for the main course. The others merely laugh – this 1,500-calorie thing may not be as easy as I thought.
But I think it’s a tad too early to suggest we head down to Annie May’s in Skibbereen for a scoop. Instead, the only vice I indulge is a quick smoke out in the forest.
Next up, it’s more games, before we set off for a nearby pier where we board the ferry for Sherkin Island. We hike over to Silver Strand where we do another high-octane workout. By 7pm, we’re back at HQ for dinner. I’m ravenous after all that exercise but have to make do with poached hake and sweet potato mash, with some quinoa while the others have chicken in pesto sauce with sweet potato mash. It’s delicious but I could gobble another dinner by the time we set off for our night kayaking adven- ture with Atlantic Sea Kayaking, run by chatty Corkman Jim Kennedy.
As the light fades, we slide into the calm waters of Lough Hyne in double kayaks at around 9pm. A hazy mist is settling on the surface but the clear night-sky, with no moon visible, seems to wrap around us like a blanket of twinkling diamonds. We glide out into the lake when suddenly our paddles seem to stir up swirls of twinkling stars from the deep waters. It’s bioluminescence, from phytoplankton.
As the water gently laps the kayak, I lie back and gaze up at Orion. Right then, mad as it sounds, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
A few minutes later, however, I take it all back. As I attempt to clamber out of the kayak, my aching legs, glutes, abs and tummy seem to have seized up entirely and I’m mortified to ask for help to get back on dry land.
In the morning, at silly o’clock, it starts all over again. And by the time I write this, I’m barely able to get out of my chair. But I leave with a smile on my face. It’s been a fab time, with brilliant people – and as I go to leave, Dick the groundsman says, with a smile: ‘My, I think you’ve lost weight.’ Kathryn must have him on the payroll too!
‘Right then, mad as it sounds, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else’