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Tokyo Together Podcast: Marathon runner Sinead Diver challenging stereotypes and breaking barriers

 

Tokyo Together Podcast: Marathon runner Sinead Diver challenging stereotypes and breaking barriers

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Podcast TokyoTogether - Sinead Diver

Marathon runner and mother of two Sinead Diver is the oldest member of the Australian Athletics Team for Tokyo 2020 at age 44 – but she’s considered a newcomer to the gruelling sport.

On this week’s episode of the Tokyo Together podcast, presented by Optus, Diver shares her unique story, growing up in Castlebar, a small country town in Ireland, where sports was seen as an activity for boys and she didn’t have a lot of opportunities to find her chosen sport.

Sinead rebelled against those ideals and studied Physical Education at university, which was her first introduction to all the different sports available to her.

Moving to Australia initially on a Working Holiday Visa, Diver enjoyed being active and playing a range of sports, but she didn’t start long-distance running until after the birth of her first son as a 33 years-old. The next decade saw her progress through the state and national levels, before she ran her first marathon in 2014 – and qualified for the World Championships the following year.

Now the 3x World Championships representative is off to her debut Olympics in Japan, where she will compete on the streets of Sapporo in northern Japan. While Sapporo is typically cooler temperatures than Tokyo, the heat and humidity will still be extreme for the Melbourne-based runner who has been training in heat chambers to try to acclimatise for the Games.

 

Diver shares how she balances training, work and spending time with her family, how she mentally prepares to run the gruelling 42-km race, and her hopes and dreams for her Olympic debut.

At the time of recording this episode, Diver and her fellow Athletics Australian marathon teammates were in Queensland preparing to race the Gold Coast Marathon. However, the event was unfortunately cancelled this week due to the progressing COVID-19 situation.

Listen to past episodes of the Tokyo Together podcast below, and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or your favourite podcast app, to never miss an episode!

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