What if your head was truly on fire ?

 

Race walking with your head on fire is a strange sensation.

This, even after I walk in bright sunshine through a water shower made possible by a local fire tender.

More than 3,000 people, myself included, pass through this quiet rural road on our way around a ten kilometre course.

Most run, I walk determinedly, as do a few others gathered in competitive cluster as focussed on besting one another as any Olympian contest, though they move slower, with more venom.

Later, I discover some jog on stretches where nobody is watching them.

Turning a quiet corner, I meet a parked fire tender belonging to the local Civil Defence Unit. Water hoses spray hanging moisture into the atmosphere from either side of the road.

They offer a choice: walk dry or take a soaking.

I stop beneath the silver spray and thank the god of walkers for sending these fine angels to us on this day in the 20 degree heat of near noon.

Not a very high temperature, but add body heat from competitive walking and the numbers climb.

Soaked through, I walk on with a new squelch in my step.

I do not take on water at the next water station. I am hydrated enough.

A short while later, in direct sunlight, my head heats up from the inside past ignition point to where I wonder what the protocol might be for a fiery head bearing down on the finish line.

I walk on, determined to finish or fall in the attempt.

My head cools down somewhat as I hit a shady area and I pick up my pace, once more.

I pass the finish line and wonder if steam is coming from my ears from the soaking.

Or if smoke is truly escaping from inside my skull.

 

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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.

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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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