And two medals around the neck. It is quite simply a first for the Dombasloise Caroline Morel, used to evolving in the sprint and who, on this Sunday in October during the French Masters championships in Chalon-sur-Saône, lined up on 200 and 400 m. His times, 27”53 and 62”16, weren’t quite to his liking, but whatever: “Over 400 m, it’s three seconds more than my time last year. But without consistency in training, and with what we had just experienced, it was almost normal. “
Because the young forty-something, sporty jack-of-all-trades who notably won the 2018 Brosses Trail (14 km), has made a vocation, her profession: to care for people. For almost 20 years, at the same time as her first athletics license, the Dombasloise has been marrying the profession of intensive care nurse at the Central Hospital of Nancy. The pandemic, in March, was an improvised marathon, but tamed thanks to its competitor’s soul: “Surpassing oneself on the track finds an echo at work. Clearly, March was the most intense time, even emotionally, since becoming a nurse. But it is also in these moments that we feel stronger and more proud, because they are more useful. In all this intensity, the bonds with the families of the patients were special too, in a good sense ”
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“We are less anxious”
In October, the French Masters championships presented themselves as a breath of fresh air. And too bad if its traditional preparations for three or four weekly sessions have not been respected. The head was already turned towards the continuation: “We suspected that it would come back. In fact, here it is currently tense but we are not on a peak. You can’t compare March and November. In March, it was new and we had to adapt. Even if it takes a little more than a year for a nurse to adapt to the world of the sheave, we have reinforcements full of good will from outside services. In short, this time, we are less anxious. Currently, we are trying not to intubate patients too quickly, and to prioritize putting them under high concentration of oxygen. Afterwards, personally, it is sure that I would have liked to decompress through sport, but with confinement… ”
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Especially since the Dombasloise, herself suffering from Covid, was recently in solitary confinement (until Saturday). “For months, it resulted in a bad cold and headaches, but I’m not going to complain and I think I’m lucky …” The very one that could lead him to argue the next Euro masters in 2021 in Tampere. But one thing at a time.
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