SHE may have resumed her athletics career quite late in life, but Cathy McCourt is now running away with it, having just returned from the World Masters Championships in Australia with a haul of shiny new medals.
The Lisburn woman surpassed her own expectations by winning two silver medals in the cross-country and half-marathon events and two bronze on the track – in both the 5,000 and 10,000-metre disciplines.
Competing at the age of 42 and running in 30 degrees heat for the first time – and on a just-recovered broken foot – made the victories all the more thrilling for the former air hostess who is the partner of award-winning photographer Declan Roughan and runs her own business, McCourt Health and Fitness.
"The Irish cross country team, which I ran with in Perth, finished second, so it was great the team came back winners as well," she says. "It made all the long months of intensive training worthwhile."
She has also just found out that she is the only Irish athlete ever to have won five medals at a major world championship, so a few allowances have been made in her usually gruelling diet and fitness regime.
"I am still celebrating and taking a little time off," says the NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) certified Level 4 personal trainer and current bronze medallist in the 5,000m World Masters and European Games.
"Although, I have to say, I enjoy eating healthily and it has now become a way of life. I don't like eating rubbish for any length of time as I start to feel sluggish and I don't enjoy the cake any more."
Success has been a long time coming for the runner who only started competing again when in her 30s, but it was always in the genes.
"My dad, Jim McCourt, is the real sports hero in the family as he is an Olympic champion in boxing," she says, proudly. "As well as winning gold in the Commonwealth games in Jamaica in 1966, he brought back the only Olympic medal back to Ireland from Tokyo in 1964 – so I had a lot to live up to."
After discovering a talent for running at the age of 14 – she initially wanted to follow the sparring footsteps of her dad in the ring – she was knocked off track for several years due to a family tragedy when her brother was fatally hit by a train not far from the family home.
"My mum was pregnant at the time and it affected the whole family deeply," she recalls. "I was 17 and had competed for Ireland internationally but there was only 10 months between my brother and I and it was a dreadful time.
"For a long period no-one was interested in anything, including sport, and my running career was sort of forgotten about as we just tried to get on with the business of grieving and learning to live again."
Then, after studying Sports Science at university, Cathy's career took off in a different direction when she joined Airtours as an air hostess, later moving to Aer Lingus and Flybe.
"I was in the air for 13 years in total and then about 10 years ago I decided to open my own business, focusing on health and fitness," she says. "Around that time I also had a chance encounter with a former coach who suggested I should start running again.
"At that time I had put on loads of weight and was very unfit, so I started running again just for the health benefits and to slim down. Then the old competitive streak kicked in and I joined a running club and started to race."
Her first breakthrough internationally came when she was selected to compete for Ireland in the World Mountain Running Championships in Italy and New Zealand, but these days prefers to keep at ground level on the running track.
"I did the mountains for a few years but then got back on the road again," she says. "I never dreamed I would be back running again at this age, especially in international runs, but life has a funny way of coming full circle.
"Competing at this level does have its drawbacks - my social life has to take a back seat and it's hard getting up to run in cold winter mornings. For the last five months it has been very intense, mentally as well as physically.
"You do need to be very disciplined and running can be addictive. Gym work and exercise classes also have to be fitted into the regime and you need some sponsorship as travel is expensive. Basically, you really, really have to want to do it."
And all the hard work in the world can't prevent random accidents – as Cathy found to her cost at the European Games in Nice last September when she overbalanced at the track and broke a metatarsal bone in her foot.
It didn't stop her running though – she ran five laps and broke through the pain to finish in third place – "although I nearly walked the home straight."
The injury proved a nasty one and at one point doctors told her she might never run again.
"They said I would need to have my foot pinned because it was so badly broken," she adds, "but I knew pins would make it worse so I consulted my physio in Carlow who used traction and manipulation to fuse the bones together.
"The treatment worked and my foot is now fine but I lost eight months out my training schedule so the success in Australia was all the sweeter."
After a short rest she will be lacing up her running shoes again, this time focusing on a new challenge – marathon running.
"I have never run a marathon before," she says, "so I'm going to start with the Bath half-marathon in March. It will be another new challenge.
"I don't know if I'll ever reach the Olympics in Tokyo 2020, but it would certainly complete a family tradition – my dad boxed his way there in 1964."
