Kathryn Thomas: Operation Balance after the arrival of her new challengers

The RTÉ presenter speaks to Jen Stevens about her new retreats, her gorgeous girls - and recording voiceovers from her wardrobe

Sun, 08 May, 2022 - 20:32

Jen Stevens

Kathryn Thomas is juggling it all. She texts me at 9.30am to say she’s just done the school run; baby Grace is asleep in the pram and, if I’m able, could we bring our planned 11am call forward she can chat without distraction.

I jump into action. I know that blissful nap window and am all for accommodating adult conversation in sweet silence. Kathryn is walking through the beautiful War Memorial Gardens in Dublin 8 where you’ll often find her with buggies, doggies and daughters.

Baby Grace is six months old, born in October last year, and Kathryn is juggling work and a sort of maternity leave.

“I went back to work in January. I didn’t have to go back but when you work for yourself, you have to make decisions, and choices that are right for you and your family. Oh, I envy people with those long leaves, I try to be nice in my envy, but you know...” she laughs.

“Grace was born at the end of October, so it was very a short break, but I knew I had to go back on my terms, so I worked with the team to figure it out. Now what I’m doing is taking my time. I’m not working this summer, not taking on any projects that would have me darting around the country.

“We walk to school every day; I do the pickups and we’re just spending a lot of time together. For me, that was the payoff. I knew I would be in early for those couple of months for Operation Transformation but now I’ve got lots of lovely things planned for the months ahead. It’s nice. I knew that balance was coming.

“What works for one person might not work for another. I was able to limit my workload back in January as well. If you were to look at the positives or the silver linings of the pandemic, it is that it taught us all to manage our time better and be a little bit more clever about how we work.”

Kathryn employed some unusual tactics in order to be able to balance a very small baby with a busy filming schedule – it may have been unorthodox, but it got the job done.

“For this whole series of Operation Transformation, I did my voiceovers on a Tuesday morning at half eight from my walk-in wardrobe with Grace on my boob. That was a revelation. Me and my producer, Steve, who I’ve known for years, got to know each other quite intimately on Zoom during those voiceover breastfeeding sessions.

“Little things like that made it so much easier. We had conversations about how it could work while I was still pregnant. I was like, ‘If there’s a way to do this, I’ll do it and if there’s not, I won’t’. And they got that.”

Kathryn Thomas: heading for Croagh Patrick next for her Pure Results retreat

Operation Transformation isn’t Kathryn’s only job of course. She’s been running health and fitness retreats business Pure Results for almost ten years now and took her programmes online during the pandemic. Her retreats are back, and the next is a five-day wellness break in Mayo, culminating with a climb of Croagh Patrick. If that sounds a bit daunting, don’t worry, the programme caters for every fitness level.

“It’s just great to be back to be honest. We had our first one down in Wicklow last weekend and there’s just a real appetite for people to be back out. We took our business online for the last two years, but I really think it’s time that we took ourselves away from computer screens. I know it still suits a lot of people, but there’s just a real appetite to get back out there again. We’ve always done big hikes wherever the retreats are, so when we were going back down to Mayo, we said we would do Croagh Patrick, it always seems to be the one that’s on everybody’s bucket list.

2I think people have had their own mountains to climb, in so many different ways over the last couple of years. To see Charlie Bird climb was incredible and I think he really hammered home the message that, however big the mountain is, there’s something incredible in setting out and going up it. We have a couple of brilliant guides with us, so people can go as far as the shoulder if they want, or if you just want to go a little bit of the way, we have someone who can take you back down and those who want to summit, can summit.”

Kathryn speaks with such passion about her retreats, you know she loves them but with a four-year-old and a new baby, getting to them all isn’t as easy as it once was.

“I used to love going on every single one. I’d jet around the place but then all of a sudden you’re this mum of two kids. You don’t have that same freedom. You don’t have that same time. It’s so important that I have a team in place to handle my end of the business. My trainers are incredible. My managers are incredible. They’ve actually told me that I’ve become surplus to requirements! They keep telling me I don’t need to be there, but I still love going, I say that I need to be there to meet everyone, to check in, but really, I’m running away from my children,” she laughs.

Kathryn Thomas: balancing an active life and series of retreats wiith her family

Kathryn’s clearly devoted to her girls, no matter how much she jokes about escaping from them but looking after a four-year-old and a six-month-old is no easy task.“We’ve come out of the dark hole as I call it, those early weeks are tough. I’m incredibly lucky, I thought this new baby was going to be Damien from The Omen because Ellie was so good but she’s great, we’re very lucky.

“Don’t get me wrong, the sleepless nights and that feeling of being slightly deranged and wondering if your brain is ever going to kick back in to be able to have a conversation again was still there. Being at home so much too was challenging. When Ellie was born it was March and coming into spring, and no one had ever heard of Covid. Grace was born in the winter, and there was still a lot of heaviness. I’m glad now that the winter is over now.

“I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions. I felt very blessed, but I also felt very guilty to be so happy at the time when there was so much shit going on in the world as well.

“Tiredness does all sorts of things to a parent, and I was very conscious to be mindful of that and be aware of it. I have the best friends in the world, that I could talk everything out with. But I often thought about women going through prenatal or postnatal depression at a time when the world was a very heavy place. It must have been so tough.

“I’m so grateful every day and I know how lucky I am with my two. My Dad brings me back down to earth though. He says, ‘Don’t worry, when you were 13 you actually nearly broke my heart for five years. My heart was in my mouth every day. You were a really good baby as well, but it was the teenager that was the problem.’ Thanks Dad!

“I swear to God, somebody just sent me a photograph of myself at 17 years of age. There I was, literally sitting on a bar, in a short skirt with my Greek boyfriend and I just thought I owned the world. If I think about that summer and then I think about the girls at that age doing the same thing, I actually shudder, I get little hot flushes,” she laughs.

For now, Kathryn is taking it all one step at a time, managing all the colds and bugs that every parent of young kids knows all about and taking it week by week.

“Padraig and I slag each other constantly. I think slagging is crucial for successful parenting. Being able to laugh at each other and at yourselves. Because it can be so overwhelming. There are those nights when the Calpol is out, and there’s someone in your bed or you’re in a bunk bed with a Paw Patrol duvet over you and you’re wrecked. The next morning, when you look around at the utter chaos all it takes is a smile. Just one smile from one of them and the world is back to rights. It’s kind of mad.”