National Indoor Arena as far away as Morocco

ATHLETICS: We need an indoor running facility more than ever before now that our winters appear to be getting worse

ATHLETES ARE a selfish lot at the best of times, which leads me to believe there is no one more grateful right now for the Big Thaw. Imagine trying to train anywhere in Ireland these past few weeks? Nine below zero, every road and footpath covered in ice, then no water for even a quick shower. There’s an excellent chance you’d be either injured or sick by now, or indeed both. To hell with the poor and the elderly – I want to go running without breaking my neck!

Things got so bad last weekend Mark Kenneally, currently our top distance runner, found himself searching for cheap flights to somewhere warm. Anywhere warm. This was more a comforting exercise than an actual quest to escape the Big Freeze around Maynooth, where Kenneally typically runs twice a day. First of all, he’s one of those rare athletes who works full-time as well as trains full-time, if that makes sense. But there’s also some old-school hardiness about Kenneally, the kind that believe there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes and weak minds.

He did make some allowances, and ordered himself a set of Stabilicers, which are sort of like snow chains for running shoes. They’re not particularly comfortable, but at least they make running over ice and snow a little less treacherous. Kenneally did briefly swallow his pride to consider training on a treadmill, but like any true old-school runner, he’s not a member of a gym. When he inquired about temporary access to a fitness club in Maynooth he was told “sorry, but members only”. No worries. Ever seen a Kenyan training on a treadmill?

Truth is I almost completely avoided this hideous descent back into the Ice Age. When you’re waking up every morning for a few weeks to the sun, sand and surf along the southern Moroccan coastline you couldn’t care less if Ireland had indeed drifted inside the Arctic Circle. In fact my only concern was which direction to go running along the sandy beaches which stretch out either side of Taghazout, and there was no issue about what shoes to wear either, because all running was done barefoot, naturally.

Upon returning last Sunday, however, I quickly realised what all the cold fuss was about. Only after offering a taxi driver an obscene amount of money did he agree to drive me home to the Dublin Mountains, where I’ve been more or less trapped, until yesterday, when temperatures finally went above zero for longer than five minutes. Initially I’d no water, and no heating, and eventually resorted to lighting an entire bag of tealights in an effort to warm the house. Still it’s a small price to pay for living within walking distance of the Blue Light.

In the end, the only way to truly get warm was to go running. It’s an amazing thing, to go from one extreme to the other, and one day of running in the snow around the Dublin Mountains made running in the sand around Morocco already seem part of another lifetime, a past so completely different from the present it almost seemed like a dream. Joni Mitchell had it down. You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

For some elite Irish athletes, training in the ice and snow just isn’t worth the risk, simply because they need to train FAST. Sprinters, in other words, would be crazy to attempt a track session when one slip of a spike could send them straight to casualty. Thus it was no surprise to hear Derval O’Rourke has been warm-weather training in the Algarve since Christmas, along with a bunch of other Irish athletes, and that David Gillick is training hard in South Africa, probably working hard on his tan as well.

Of course none of this would be an issue if Ireland had a proper indoor running facility. Yes, the incredible dumbness of our failure to build such a facility surfaces around this time every year, but given the obvious crisis of the state finances, a national indoor arena appears further away than at any point in its long and troubled history. It’s a subject I thought I’d exhausted, but if, as we’re told, our winters are only going to get worse – despite the apparent threat of global warming – then surely we need an indoor running facility now more than ever. Instead, it’s a fading light at the end of the tunnel, rather than an approaching one.

So for three decades already, the only indoor facility available to athletes anywhere in the country is that belonging to Nenagh Athletic Club, which, and no disrespect, is little more than a glorified hayshed. In fairness, it has served its purpose, but also its time – and was never once intended to become a National Indoor Arena, which through Government default, it effectively has. The one saving grace is that the Northern Ireland Athletics Federation makes use of the Odyssey Arena in Belfast to stage the National Indoor Championships, but only by installing a temporary track in what is still strictly a multi-purpose entertainment venue. We’ll all be making the trek back up there next month.

Our enduring quest to build a national indoor arena would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. I’ve often told the story of 1987, when then Taoiseach, the late Charles Haughey, staged a press conference at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, surrounded by most of his cabinet. With typical pomp, Haughey unveiled the Government’s long-promised plan for a National Indoor Arena, which after a feasibility study costing over one million of our dear old punts, was approved for the Dublin docklands.

Although I wasn’t there, my father was, and overcome with a sense of déjà vu, he stood up in front of the assembly to ask whether he’d see this arena in his lifetime, to which Haughey smartly replied: “How old are you, young man?” – prompting all-round laughter. Needless to say my father is not getting any younger, and remains as sceptical as ever about seeing such an arena in his lifetime.

In more recent years, I have witnessed two further government promises for a National Indoor Arena: in 1999, I stood in Santry to hear Jim McDaid, then Minister for Sport, unveil grand plans for an indoor track, to be built adjacent to the athletics stadium, yet no stone was turned; and in 2004, I heard another, then Minister for Sport, John O’Donoghue, buzzing about his great new venture at Abbotstown, which would, eventually, boast an indoor sporting arena. Yet we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, as F Scott Fitzgerald would say.

The irony in all of this is likes of Gillick and O’Rourke are training overseas, in the sun, for the indoor season, which climaxes at the World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar, at the end of March – where surely it will be warmer outdoors than indoors.

In the meantime, this weekend sees Nenagh once again stage the first two indoor meetings of the new season; this afternoon’s National Junior Championships, and tomorrow’s Athletics Ireland Indoor Games. There’s a notice on the Athletics Ireland website to say “there will be heating” in Nenagh, which to anybody who has ever run there will know, is the equivalent of lighting a bag of tealights to warm a house.