Doing the marathon

Some 14,600 people set off in Dublin City Marathon.

Just 12,267 cross the finish line hours and hours later.

For the first time, I am one of them. I walk though many run.

In the weeks that follow, emails pour in offering me photographs of myself in the race.

No thanks.

Nobody looks good in a marathon, except the elite running at the front as if everyone is chasing them, as they are.

People head off in great spirits.
Some end that way, others contemplate their own mortality on the journey and become introverted.

I pass a Lego man who started out so well. His outfit has become dysfunctional and is upended on a park bench for repair as I pass by.

The roads are strewn with the bodies of runners who listened to their memory rather than their present-day fitness. Voluntary ambulance people rush about to attend to self-administered malfunctions of the corpus.

The route is geared towards runners, I come to realise as I saunter along.
Each time I approach a water station or a local musician hired to create atmosphere they are packing up to go home.

Your time is up, their body language says.
Mine says keep going.

I do.

A solitary woman stands at the most difficult point of the marathon and claps like a crowd of one.
I almost propose to her dear heart in gratitude.

At the finish, I run a little to show I still have it.

A man on a public address shouts at me to stop running for I passed over the finish line a distance behind.

A barrier of women in official clothing place medals on ribbons on our heads like the champions we are.

My time was too slow but I know what to do next year.

Grand.

Storytelling here

Twitter here 

Book http://dublinfolktales.com/book/

facebook https://www.facebook.com/BrendanNolanStory

Not falling down but walking

The sympathetic word can wound more deeply that any caustic taunt from an onlooker.

People in high visibility jackets clap politely as I walk the roads of Phoenix Park on my own.

They are stewards for an eight kilometre race organised as the first of four warm-ups for the Dublin city marathon, now only some 17 weeks away, down the road.

They say: well done, almost there, when I am still ages away from the end.

The running pack is gone ahead; the stragglers lost in the distance behind me.

Such words are meant kindly, for they believe me to be a runner who has run out of steam and needing encouragement.

Instead, I am a walker nearly losing consciousness from the thrill of passing out overweight joggers who it seems will reach their mortal end before they meet a finish line on this earth.

A man on a bicycle coming down a steep hill says gruffly to me that I should get to grips with matters athletic: I don't know his exact words for he is freewheeling down the hill while I am power walking up it.

I will finish in the low 3,000s out of 5,000 starters, mostly runners; but that does not seem to matter to the well-sayers.

The man on the public address at the end seems to be particularly concerned at my pace: that of a capable walker finishing strongly where he believes, wrongly, that I am a runner who has lost faith.

He addresses me by my name, having found it on the entrant's list.

The god of rain joins in to drench me with driving vertical rain.

I do not care; for I am home now.

I even run a little for the finishers' cameraman.

God forgive me.

 

Personal best, I'd say.

Storytelling here

Twitter here 

Book

facebook

 

 

 

Nice shoes

I decide I will take this walking a little more seriously.

People are looking at me as I walk along with intent and a faraway look in my eyes. I discard the heavy hiking boots and purchase some runners for my feet. And since I don't feel easy with the concept of runners I opt to call them trainers.

That name suggests there is an alternative for me somewhere down the road. A short cut I may explore in lieu of pounding the main drag with serious people who move with their heads down.

In winter, some buy little lights for their heads so they can run in darkness, in conflict with nature which dims natural light so we may remain indoors and vegetate, while watching outdoor videos.

However, many winter moons have passed since it was easy to walk into a shop to buy a pair of anything for your feet.

Trainers there are in dozens by price, maker, colour and many more definitions that are hard to follow unless you are indoctrinated by the manufactures' marketing people.

I even have special insoles moulded to suit my feet which, I am assured, have developed lazy arch muscles because of a decades-long pause in anything approaching a serious work-out.

They turn out to be so comfortable that I walk on air, a giddy sensation, not unknown to liberated men escaping the shackles of domesticity.

The assistant says she will email me the readings of my feet for my own records; handy to have if I ever forgot what my feet look like and have to search for them.

But she never does, even though she is very careful of the spelling of my address.

I may just walk back there in my trainers to see what happened to my missing feet.
Storytelling here
Twitter here 

Buy the book here