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.

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Walking a mile in my shoes

Walking in drowned shoes is not something to be contemplated lightly. 

 

 

For, it is a sad sight to behold from above. Your once prized footwear sitting there with water dripping from every side.

Silently.

However, out of tragedy comes comfort.

New, expensive, trainers seemed to ask for a night outdoors, alone, on a fine summer's night.

I agreed, and left them at the door, away from smelling dogs and marauding night cats; they would be safe, I said as I repaired to bed and blew out the candle in my mind.

Next morning, the landscape glistened with early dew and the residue of overnight rain.

Alas, the trainers acted as miniature Noah's Arks sans animals or sense; they were soaked to their core and would not even float me through a day walking on the high tracks of Wicklow's mountains.

That's why a trawl began through old boxes and un-opened wardrobes where the raiments of personalities past hung awaiting the Resurrection.

A pair of battered boots lay silently in a remote corner, deposited and forgotten until a time of need called them forth once more.

Slipped on to impatient feet, they were like the caress of a lover of long ago, remembered in dreams and fond imaginings.

Once, they were new and impressed more than one other person with their design and finish.

They accompanied me on many adventures and never once let me down, whether the impulse was to dawdle or depart --- with all alacrity.

Now, they were brought into daylight once more to replace their replacers, if only while the usurpers dried out from the activities of the night before.

We three headed out onto the track.

 It was as if I was being guided by old friends.

All I had to do was relax, and walk.



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A cycling ringmaster at the canine circus

No matter how fast you walk someone else will always catch you and pass you by.

I'm out training for the Dublin City Marathon. I bring the dog for company. The dog is not doing the marathon, she is 12 years old, too young in man years, too old in dog years.

A voice speaks in my ear and is then past me, like a bee on a journey somewhere and sounding a loud buzz to clear the way.

The woman's voice is jolly and encourages me to keep going.

It is a cyclist with a crash helmet on.

 

The bicycle she rides has a back carrier upon which rests a high vis rain jacket, though the warm sun is shining in the sky.

We are both travelling along the side of a long rectangular green open space.

Each of us is in the company of our respective dogs. Hers is younger than mine.

While I walk along and mind my own business and my dog does the same, this cyclist seems to believe she is a ringmaster in a circus.

She wears earphones and may hear different voices in her head to the rest of us.

She calls out commands and encouragement to her canine friend who by and large completely ignores her in favour of stray sniffing at who-knows-what in the long grass.

It is my habit to include this rectangle in my training walk to fill out a distance. Besides it's nice and soft on the paws of the dog.

My new acquaintance passes me by once more. This time she remains silent. Her dog is not doing what she commands it to do. I believe she is sorry she hailed me.

I quicken my pace as does my dog, unbidden.

We leave this mad circus behind.

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Ghost train

It is easy when walking along an old railway line in driving rain to imagine you see the lights of an oncoming train.

Except, the last train ran here on the Westport to Achill railway in 1937, so the lights cannot be of a train of this world.

Perhaps it’s a train from the past, still tracing the Atlantic coast, ignoring the walkers and cyclists on the 42km Great Western Greenway, the longest off-road walking and cycling trail in Ireland, they say.

For myself, I have completed a six kilometre section and have turned back to my starting point when the Atlantic Gods send clouds of rain after me to remind me of my human vulnerability.

Where once there were cyclists and a solitary walker; there is only the walker, me, with head down against the saturating sea that is now in the wind.

Primroses lined the path on the way out. Now, green ferns lurk beside the track. They seem to be waiting to grow over the drowned walker.

The line was a single track narrow gauge. The sleepers are gone and the trail is flattened for modern leisure use.

A bike passes by with a small trailer behind it.

Inside is a child in a plastic bubble wondering where it will all end; for if I cannot see in, then the child cannot see out.

Still the grandfather pushing along in the lowest gear thinks this a life-forming experience for his charge.

It is. The kid will henceforth run away when confronted by a bubblegum bubble on wheels.

Then they too are gone.

The approaching lights are cars on an adjacent road, I see now.

Not for the first time do I wish for a ghost to come and rescue me.

I will settle for a ghost train.


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A knee in the groin

I am in a London airport.

I am mightily vexed with body frisks and repetitive baggage checks visited upon us.

This, in response to people with nothing else to do but attempt to blow up aeroplanes with, or without, themselves on them.

This always strikes me as boredom gone mad.

Anyone who thinks that blowing up other people is a worthy idea needs to meet more personable people than the morose mammals with which they are currently consorting.

A good tickle and a chuckle would not go astray.
 Like.

I am in a lift when a pained man in running shorts and a full backpack arrives in with his fully clad wife.

Her demeanour is one of a person on a mission. She wears a smart business suit. It's light in colour for it is a Sunday.

But she makes it very clear she is there to protect and preserve her man.

He wears a very large brownish medallion that somehow signifies he did something worthwhile, like completing the marathon, just now.

He is so stiff in walking that I am reminded of a crab moving along with determined motion.

I think to ask him what his time was; but if it was not up to his personal best standards, then he might be distraught and the woman in the nice suit might knee me in the groin.

Then I wonder if I will mention that I am in training to walk the Dublin City Marathon, a few months hence.

Perhaps not: I am fully clad for I need a pocketed jacket to carry my books past the airline's weighing machine.

I remain silent.

Next morning, when I tumble onto the road to walk, I am stiff of limb.

I wonder if the suited woman is waiting for me.

Security.


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Training Apaches

The scissors platform is raised high above the swelling mob on the big wide avenue that is the backbone of Phoenix Park.

On it are a man and a woman facing in opposite directions.

The day is warm for a foot race but this pair tell people they will warm them up for the event.
Many seem overjoyed at this news.

Humans jump up and down in response to the shouted commands from on high.

It's hard not to believe that, to a visitor from Mars, humans are a strange species, not to mention to any passing Messiahs, during Lent.

Mass obedience to shouted instructions is the order of the day.

These people have raised funds or paid an entry fee to participate in all of this.

They seem to think it very important to warm up when told to do so.

After all, they will run 10 kilometres around the leafing roads to arrive back here, warmed up and panting, to receive a goody bag of branded goods from various sponsors.

Camera crews are positioned around the course to relay the participants' efforts to a television audience happily sitting down to Sunday roast at home.

Everywhere you look, in hollow or glade, atop mounds of green grass, people gather in bright colours to prepare for the event. They stretch bits of their bodies in different directions to make them more supple.

It is difficult not to think of them as wild Indians preparing to descend in marauding groups on the capitalist intruders all around them.

Would the race entrants move faster if they were told the Apaches were after them? Someone should take a breath and shout a warning.

I may, when the elevated people cannot see who the mischief maker is in the crowd of jumping people.

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Smoking Runner

I am walking along, determined to be a better person than I am when I meet a smoking runner coming towards me.

She has just completed a 5 kilometre course with others wearing the same pink shirts that proclaim they are all individually members of a group dedicated to some common cause.

Either the word women, or, ladies is printed among the other words on the shirts; but I am too polite to stare to see which, for I may be perceived as a predatory male walker.

I smile at the sky above their collective heads, instead.

There is a 10 kilometre course up ahead to complete for those who did not want to go home.

But since that is the same course run twice it hardly seems to count as a longer distance.

More of an instant action replay of the previous distance covered, I feel.

The smoker carries a plastic two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola from which she swigs in between puffs of the fag. I can't help noticing she is a little overweight for a runner, but resolve not to stare.

She is walking towards me and I step aside, breaking my own training pace.

She takes this as her right for she is a veteran now, having chased the others around five kilometres of tarmac, for a while.

They sweep past me with the determined step of the righteous achiever.

The solitary smoker is on the outskirts of the group; a weak member to be left behind by the fitter members of the pinkshirts, when her time comes.

She does not know this as they pass me by, unnoticed.

I stopped smoking twenty years ago; but am overwhelmed with desire when her trailing smoke reaches my nostrils.

Jezebel I think, unfairly, as I resume my own pace.



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Getting dangerous in a hoodie

Buying and wearing a hoodie should not be taken as an act of aggression.

I walk now with more determination than a gardener seeking a site for a new rose bed; so, I buy some track suit trousers to allow for faster movement without chafing my legs to death.

While in the giant shed of a retail outlet I purchase a grey top with a zip front and a hood atop the whole thing. This is known as a hoodie, much loved by the criminal with a bad hairdo.

I buy it for the weather, not as a criminal disguise.
However, I cannot fight perception and find it more practical to wear this top with the hood down, a contradiction in design if ever there was one.

Solo walking takes application to the matter in hand, so when I first step out in the hoodie I seek a walker in the distance to pace.

I see a young woman in street clothes who is, I begin to believe, related to Superwoman. She walks with a measured gait that seems to set the universe spinning beneath her feet. She moves across distance at a pace a winged steed would find emotionally satisfying.

I lock in to her moving form with determination and she drags me along with her. It is a while before I realise she is fleeing from me.

For, I am wearing the hoodie with the top up against a vicious breeze that seeks to separate my ears from my body.

If I call out to say she is safe; her apprehension will be confirmed and she will phone the police to arrest me. For wearing a hoodie.

I take a less travelled path at the next junction. I put my hood up. For hoodie walking can be dangerous.

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If the hat fits wear it

Walking in the rain will make your head wet.

I walk by the bank of the Liffey near where I live. Rain does not respect our image of our wonderful selves. It comes down in sheets upon my unprotected head and on the land and trees and greenery all about me.

Come summer, this will be a verdant place suitable for tourists, and the like, to have their photos taken by the white water weir.

For now, my mind seeks shelter inside my skull from the hammering of raindrops intent on piercing my being.

When a voice hails me I think it is the Weather Gods mocking me.

It is John the Hatman.

He becomes that when he produces a white plastic bag, with handles, from his pocket and waves it at me.

He is walking a dog on a leash, the bag has come from his pocket, he wears a multicoloured peaked cap himself. The plastic bag is for my head; To keep me dry, he says.

I ask his name.

I pull the hat down over my soaked hair.  It fits. I bless John and all his descendants and thank his ancestors for the fine breeding they have achieved in this man, whom I have never met before.

Later, I come to terms with the awareness that I am waking beneath a bag originally intended to collect John's dog's waste as he perambulated along. I know though, for I have judged John in my mind, that the bag was unused when it was presented to me by a kind man.

I wear it with determination even when the rain stops and the sun shines on my headgear with malevolence.

I pass an Angus steer in a field and say nothing, nor does he.

You either understand these things.

Or not.


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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.
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