The would-be London Marathon runner working coronavirus wards as a doctor instead

Olympic standard: Eleanor Whyman-Davis wanted to dip under the 150-minute mark

Around the time the London Marathon should have started on Sunday, Eleanor Whyman-Davis will instead be beginning work as a doctor on a Covid-19 ward at Stockport’s Stepping Hill Hospital.

Before the event’s postponement, she had ambitions to achieve the Olympic standard and dip under the 2hr 30min mark for the first time in her career.

Instead, she will pack her scrubs in her rucksack and set off on the four-mile run to work, before putting herself in the front line of the fight against coronavirus.

“It’s odd I’ll be on the ward about the same time that I should have been starting the Marathon,” she says.

Life could rarely be more different. Whyman-Davis had booked annual leave for the two weeks leading up to London, to be spent at a training camp in Portugal to fine-tune her preparations, but, “I ended up working on a coronavirus ward on my holiday”.

Whyman-Davis had been training as a GP, working three days a week on a fracture ward, before the virus struck. She is still doing that work, but with additional days as a doctor on coronavirus wards.

“On the Covid wards, the patients are really poorly and it’s really upsetting at times,” she says. “And there’s difficult conversations with families every day.

“It’s not something that you’d ever wish on someone, to have to say goodbye to a relative on FaceTime. Now, one family member is allowed in for 10 minutes, but then in the next breath you have to tell them they have to self-isolate for two weeks, can’t go to the funeral or give a relative a hug. That’s an impossible decision for people to make and that’s tough.”

But rather than focusing on the hardship, Whyman-Davis has preferred to focus on the positives of what she has seen. “The staff are really amazing

and the care and compassion of the nursing staff is something I will carry with me for the rest of my career,” she says. “There are some very uplifting moments, when patients get better and leave the ward.

“Families expect the worst and you prepare for the worst, but then you can tell them that their mum or dad is coming home. It’s one of the most difficult times the NHS has seen, but the highest morale I’ve seen.”

Having worked as a doctor for nearly six years and been to a medical school which was heavy on the communication side of its training, Whyman-

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Davis feels well prepared for what she calls “unique” working conditions. But she has sympathy for the doctors and other medical staff who have recently qualified and “been thrown straight in”.

Her wife, Sarah, is also on the front line, working as an A&E consultant at Manchester Royal Hospital, and the couple have tried, where possible, not to bring their work home.

“We do try to leave it at the door as much as possible, but there’s not much else to talk about right now,” she adds. “So, we talk about it a bit.”

For Whyman-Davis, the running commute helps. It blows off the cobwebs in the morning and eases the upset on the return leg.

“By the time I get home, it feels like I’ve get everything out of my head,” she says.

And she is part of the 2.6 Challenge, a charity venture by London Marathon and other events to help fill the fundraising black hole left by the collective postponement of events. She is one of 12 elite British women raising funds by running 2.6 miles on Sunday.

But Sunday will also be a case of what might have been. Ranked 10th in Great Britain last year, she had felt in the form of her life — “definitely in personal best shape” — and plans to keep her form until the rearranged date in October.

In her current line of work, that seems a long way off. “I’d like to

compete if it goes ahead,” she says, “But right now it seems impossible for anything mass to go ahead.”

To donate to the 2.6 Challenge, go to justgiving.com/fundraising/britishmarathonwomen

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