Barr taking the good with the bad as he brushes off Summer of disappointment
ONTO THE NEXT: Thomas Barr of Ireland reacts after finishing 5th in his men's 400m hurdles semi-final during day three of the World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
The winter slog holds no fears for Thomas Barr.
The 30-year hasn’t run competitively since exiting the European Championships 400m hurdles at the semi-final stage in Munich in August but he is already two weeks into his off-season grunt work and well on the way to leaving last summer’s frustrations behind.
He’s already had his month off, so the coming months are all about laying the foundations for 2023 and beyond, but tomorrow night will find him and many others brave the outdoors with nothing more than a sleeping bag and some cardboard for extra padding as part of Focus Ireland’s ‘Shine A Light Night’ campaign.
His work with Focus Ireland goes back four or five years now, his involvement in this particular cause predicated on his difficulty in comprehending how a society as developed as Ireland’s could house a homelessness problem that, exacerbated by high property prices and rising rents, is spiralling ever higher.
Barr’s first experience of this annual event was the ‘Big Deise Sleepout' four years ago and, while he seems to be one of the few who can manage a few hours of shut-eye regardless of the elements, he is all too aware that he can slip into a warm bed or a hot shower as soon as he gets home again.
This year’s event is once again looking to raise vital funds - the goal is €1.5m - to help end what is a growing scourge and a stain on the nation. The latest government figures paint a sobering picture: 10,568 people in emergency accommodation, 3,137 of them children and 1,423 families. Shameful.
“Shelter is a basic human need and every single person in the country should have it,” Barr explained. “It’s not uncommon for people to fall on hard times and a lot of us are lucky in this country to have the backing of friends and family and have somewhere to go if we need it.
“That isn’t the case for everyone. They can end up on the streets with nowhere to go and no job prospects. If you don’t have an address it is very hard to get out of that loop and Focus Ireland help people to get a fixed abode, to get them on their feet again, and then to become self-sufficient again.”
For Barr himself, the next few months will be low-key but highly important for the season to come and which will hopefully peak at the World Championships in Budapest. After that comes the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Throw in a Europeans in Rome to that pile and there is plenty coming down the track.
The season just gone promised so much but delivered so little. He came into the championship campaign energised by a near flawless run-in but an Achilles injury in late May cost him five weeks and a whole load of momentum that filtered into his efforts at the Worlds in Oregon and the Europeans in Munich.
He hasn’t raced since the latter, which ended with that semi-final exit at the Olympiastadion in a disappointing time of 49.30. The hope is that he can now replicate the training bloc that served him so well this time last year before hitting the track competitively in early spring rather than early summer.
“I’m going to try and get back into that rhythm again this season. I might try to do some indoors just to break it up because it is a long, long winter. I sacrificed it this year because I was in such a rhythm I didn’t want to break it. In hindsight I would have liked to have done a few to put a marker down and get some races in.”
His mental strength continues to serve him well. He doesn’t gloss over the disappointments this year but understands, as with the successes, that they are fleeting and that what counts is whether you can treat both as equals. He still loves all this, the training and the races, even in Oregon when it all went sideways on him.
“I was standing there before we went on the track and my heart was pumping. I was getting that nervous energy and it made me think that ‘yeah, this is what I enjoy’. It nearly frightened me. It was exactly what I wanted and it had been a while since I’d had that feeling. It reminded me.”
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