NOBODY LIKES WAKING at 5am.
Nicholas Quinn is no different but he’s getting used to it slowly but surely.
It certainly helps when all those early starts result in a ticket to Rio and the Olympic Games, but it doesn’t mean they’re not still the worst part of being a swimmer.
Last Sunday, the Castebar native qualified for the 2016 Games with a magnificent performance in Eindhoven where he swam half a second under the International Swimming Federation’s Olympic A time for the 200m breaststroke.
It means he joins Fiona Doyle, Shane Ryan and diver Oliver Dingley in Rio after claiming gold at the 2016 Eindhoven Swim Cup.
Suddenly all those early alarms have paid off.
“I was delighted,” he told The42 this week.
“Well, first of all I was relieved but I was delighted as well. I’d targeted that meet in Eindhoven since last September and that A standard has been a goal of mine for the last two years and everything I’ve done has built towards that swim.
“I was quite happy with my heat swim and knew that I could get (the time) there in the final. You’ve got to have fun and just race and I knew I was capable of doing the time but you never know until you actually get in the pool.”
The 22-year-old is in university in Scotland but has taken a year off to focus fully on the Olympics.
However, he says that having a number of team-mates around him on campus who are also trying to get on the aeroplane to Rio — albeit in Team GB togs — has helped him hit form at the right time.
“I’m training in Edinburgh at the minute and the British trials are on in Glasgow right now and all my team-mates are pretty much focusing on that so all my training was tailored to peak at this time.
“It just happened that meet was on at this time and the facilities over there are really good and so it just worked for me.”
The facilities may be top class, but Quinn is still required to put in a mighty effort every day.
“A normal day starts with my alarm going off around 4.55am and I’ll have something quick to eat, just a banana or something quick like that. I’ll then aim to be at the pool around 5.15am or 5.30am and do 15-20 minutes of pre-pool work.
“That’s just stretching and making sure I’m warmed up for the two, two-and-a-half hour session in the pool until about 8am. We’ll know going into each of those sessions what it’ll involve whether it’ll be speed work, aerobic or what have you.
“After that, from about 8.30am to 10am, I’ll be in the gym three or four times a week and then it’s about getting back and getting some food and getting some rest.
“I’d be back in pool then in the afternoon for another two hours with a different session. Usually the evenings are tougher because there’s more of a focus on pace and working on the breaststroke.”
Like a lot of kids who end up doing well in sport, Quinn only started swimming because it was something his siblings were interested in it.
“I’ve always been into swimming but I was probably about ten before I started to take it seriously. My brother and sister were swimmers as well and they are both older than me so I was really just following them when I was younger.
“I played every other sport as a young lad but I began to drop them one by one and swimming was the last one standing when I was about 14 or 15 and I always just kept going with it and it never even crossed my mind to give it up.
“Castlebar pool was only a 10-minute drive away, it really wasn’t very far at all. I did a lot of morning swims back there but I was lucky there were never any 5am starts at all so it would usually be about 7am to 8.30am and then go to school.”
He’s not a calorie counter and says that the Michael Phelps ’12,000 calories a day’ stories are just myths but Quinn does say that if you don’t eat properly as a swimmer you feel it more than other sports, especially in the second pool session.
And with qualification in the bag, the psychology student is going to use the European Championships to practise race strategy and then every early morning, every gruelling session will be enjoyed with Rio in mind.
And the plan when Quinn gets there:
“A second swim has to be the goal.
“Obviously the heat is first up and the heats at this level are so competitive that you just have to go out and put in a really honest swim. You’re dealing with the tiniest of margins and one slightly bad turn could end your Olympics.
“If you get into a semi-final then you can just go for it, who knows what can happen from there.”
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