Saturday with Paul O'Donovan: When the weather is good, West Cork is the best place in the world
Athlete Paul O Donovan, Olympic Rower, has partnered with the National Dairy Council to highlight dairy’s role in supporting performance, muscle recovery after exercise and health within a balanced diet.
Every couple of weeks I will be on call in the Mater Hospital over the weekend but if I’m not at work I’ll get up around 7am or 8am — there’s no major panic.
I’ll have a good breakfast — probably porridge with milk and some yoghurt and maybe even some cheese which will help set me up for the day.
I’ll read for a bit after breakfast — I prefer to have my breakfast digested a bit before I start my training. I’m not sitting too many exams at the moment so I’m not reading as many study materials as I would be at exam time.
I’m a slow reader at the best of times and have been particularly slow at reading the book I’m currently on, which is Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander about how analogy-making is one of the fundamental processes of thinking — it’s quite interesting.
I’ll try to get some training done at some stage. I mostly train on the rowing machine — there’s one in my house in Dublin and it’s convenient because I don’t have to travel to it. It would be better if I could be in the boat all the time, but at the moment, time is of the essence.
Rowing on the machine is great anyway — it works out all of your muscles and helps develop your endurance and your fitness.
I don’t get the opportunity to get out on the boat so much in Dublin as my boat is currently in Cork and there’s a bit of a process in bringing it up to Dublin.
It’s always a bit of a balancing act between the rowing and the career — there are times when one is concentrated on and the other is ticking over and being maintained. I have to shift the focus on the time I’m giving to each one depending on the time of year.
If I wasn’t in work I would have lunch at home or I might meet one of the lads from the club in Skibbereen after their own training. I’ll usually have vegetable soup for vitamins and minerals and a sandwich with cheese for flavour and protein.
If I’m not in Dublin, an ideal Saturday would be spent in West Cork. My old man has a small pleasure motorboat so we’ll take that out and go around the islands, maybe jump out on a beach and have a picnic and a swim in the sea.
When the weather is good it’s glorious — the best place in the world to be.
I’ll usually do some more reading in the afternoon. Throughout my career I’ll have to do sets of exams — I’ve done one set since graduating and I might do another set next year. I’m also doing some research at the moment so I’ll always set aside a bit of time for research and learning.
I’ll try to get out in the fresh air. Recently, my friends and I went to the beach — they thought the water was freezing but I thought it was grand — I’ve built up a tolerance for cold water.
I might go to a concert or meet people in town. I don’t like to drink a lot but I might go for one or two or something non-alcoholic — it’s nice to be sociable. I enjoy opera and love everything that the Irish National Opera does.
I started listening to classical music at some stage and met some people that were into it and started going to concerts and opera is not too much of a jump from that.
With the Cork Opera House close to home in Cork I try to get to see any Irish National Opera performances in the Opera House. When I’m rowing it’s often nice to listen to nothing, to switch off and let the time drift by, but if I am listening to music I listen almost entirely to classical music.
If I was at home, I’d go to bed around 11pm or 12am. I might read before bed, but I’d never watch a movie or a series on Netflix. I’m not against it, I just have no huge interest in it.
If I’m reading or listening to a podcast, they’ll be science or philosophy-based. I’m not a bad sleeper — especially if I stay on top of things and I am not working nights.
Paul O’Donovan recently helped to launch the National Dairy Council’s ‘High-Performance Breakfast, Powered by Irish Dairy’ a new three-year partnership between the National Dairy Council and the Sport Ireland Institute which will provide a nutritious dairy-based breakfast five days a week for Ireland’s elite athletes, coaches and support staff as they prepare for the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The partnership aims to highlight dairy’s role in supporting performance, muscle recovery after exercise and health within a balanced diet.
- National Dairy Council: ndc.ie
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