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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the podcast version of Sunday Masalini, which differs from the radio version for rights reasons. We hope you enjoy the program.
They call him Barefoot Ted, an American hero who has run marathons all over the States on all kinds of terrain in his bare feet. Ted says the first time he ran without shoes, it was like his feet were fish jumping back into the water after being held captive. I read about him in Born to Run, a book that anyone who hangs around running clubs will hear about sometime.
Ted may be the reason I'm sat here in the car, in my running top and shorts, by the Mornington Dunes. I don't want to get out. I sit for a while, procrastinating, the car a cradle gently rocking in the breeze. I check Instagram, Twitter, Gmail. Finally, I get out and feel the angry breeze on my legs, goose pimpled and complaining.
I take my runners off and throw them in the back seat and step barefoot through the vast sand dunes. On the strand, I twist the creaks from my ankles and start to run.
Chapter 2: What experiences shaped the host's relationship with running?
Running barefoot, I feel the slap of my feet against the million minuscule grains of sand, the textures beneath my soul. This is my foot striking off of the land. No uncertainty. No millimetres of rubber insoles or air bubbles masking the impact. Why do we need shoes when our feet are ready-made?
I first walked barefoot in these dunes when I was suffering from plantar fasciitis, a tightness of the muscles in the legs and feet that causes severe pain in the soles. It made running impossible. I tried rolling my feet over rubber balls and empty bottles, but nothing was making them better. I couldn't run. The frustration of not being able to run is known to every injured runner.
Seeing people jogging as I drove past them infuriated me. Feck them and feck my stupid feet. I came across advice to walk barefoot on rough ground as a cure. So I took myself down to Beddystown Beach in Eastmeath a few minutes' drive from Drogheda, took off my shoes and went for a walk. I loved the feel of my feet on the ground. I felt I was going back to something I'd done as a child.
For the first few strides on Bettystown Beach, I'm sure this will be an easy run. Just stretch out your legs and run. But 30 seconds in, my body protests. More air, more air. I have to open my mouth to inhale, suck it in as another breath rushes out. My breathing is arrhythmic and scattered. My strides are self-conscious. What is this? My body yells. All day sitting and now this? Why?
There's nothing to run from. Nothing to chase. A minute or two and the body recovers. Again, the precocious confidence. Ah, this is easy. I've got this. I must be one kilometre into a five kilometre run and I feel great. Fleeting thoughts go through my mind. Random tune fragments, lyrics from songs, chores to do. No pattern, awkward strides. My watch vibrates. One mile done.
Almost one third complete. Not bad. The first time I ran barefoot, I was surprised how good it felt. My feet weren't bruised or bleeding. I didn't break a toe or cut my soles. My feet felt free, in contact with the naked earth, feeling its curves and uncertainties. Every step sent information into my body. Grass, rocks, mud, puddles, all earth, Mother Earth.
I reach laytown then turn to head back. I realise the wind which has been blowing me down the strand is now my foe. My breathing is deep and loud. I seem to be running through treacle. I feel every stride. I begin to look for landmarks conscious of the distance still to go. I am fighting my body and mind to keep going and then a hit of dopamine leaves me elated. I could run forever.
If heaven is an eternal run I could die now. Sometimes in the wind or rain you just fall in love with running. The mist on your face, the solitary battle with life, the struggle and the reward. Sometimes you've just got to whoop out loud to yourself or to the universe. Woohoo! I'm alive! Two miles done, just over one to go. The third mile broken up into parts.
One more stride and one more and one more and then it's over. I'd been running barefoot for six months on the beach, sometimes in the twilight when I couldn't see my feet, trusting my sense of touch without a care. One morning in the bright sunlight I saw a glint on the sand, something green. I stopped to pick up a small piece of bottle glass and put it in my pocket.
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Chapter 3: How did barefoot running impact the host's physical health?
Local residents who had their beloved flaggy shore inundated with day-trippers had to wait until the fuss died down before they could return to their peaceful lives. They must have prayed that Seamus Heaney, or any other poet of note, would keep their thoughts to themselves when lording their favourite beauty spot.
So at the risk of encouraging a sudden surge in popularity for one of my favourite places, here goes. and sometime make the time to drive north side past Dublin's Connolly Station. Continue out past Fairview Park and follow on along the Clontarf Seafront until Dollymount comes into view. Then, with your heart in your mouth, you take a right turn and slowly approach the wooden bridge.
With the lights in your favor, you drive onto the bridge and hear for the first time the rhythmic clap, clap, clapping sound the tires make as you pass over the wooden boards. My family drove over this wooden bridge so many times that it has become part of the music of my childhood.
It brings me right back to sunny Sunday afternoons, the car packed to the brim with children, flasks of tea, tomato and onion sandwiches and me all O'Hare's voice streaming from the car radio. Ahead of you is the Railton Amara Star of the Sea, and on either side, the old Manaw Ogg's Fear bathing shelters.
And there, at last, to your left, stretching northwards towards Sutton and Hoth Head, is Donnymount Beach. I believe this beach to be a little piece of heaven on the edge of our capital city. It didn't even exist 200 years ago.
It formed only after the North Bull Wall was built in the 1820s to prevent silting at the mouth of the Liffey, a project originally proposed by Captain William Bly of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. The resulting sandbank became known as Bull Island, with day-trippers flocking to the growing beach in the late 19th century.
It is now a UNESCO biosphere, a nature reserve, a bird sanctuary, a haven for kite surfers, and all within a stone's throw of Dublin's O'Connell Street. I've been known to become heated on learning that people, mostly Southsiders, have never been there. What? You've never been to Dollymount Beach? Ever? Incredulous, I'd persist.
But where would you go on a sunny Sunday afternoon when you were children? Yes, I know the tide goes out forever at Dollymount and is always in at sea point. But Dollymount has the softest golden sand you've ever seen. Besides, you can't just turn up at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and expect to have a decent swim. No, you must plan your day at Dollymount.
Pick a day at the end of August maybe, when the tide is due in at tea time and the light is a true summer blue. Spend the day making sandcastles, jumping off the dunes, walking through the marram grass, watching the kite surfers. And all this time the tide will be slowly inching its gentle way forward.
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Chapter 4: What memories does the host associate with Bettystown Beach?
But the sea, oh the sea, it crept up on me and the water was rising up...
A glittering day, blinding. A cliff-path day, if ever there was one. Seconds later, sunglasses on, I'm heading down Hoth's Main Street, off to Balsgaden Road, where the sea on my left is already speckled by Sunday's first yachts. Number one start-the-race cannon shot cracks at my eardrums and frightens garden-based dogs into barking fits of hysteria.
But Ireland's eye floats serene and still out there, at ease with the light and shadow play tickling its green midriff. Immediately below me, the rock-bound swimming pool gleams clear and green, alluring, undisturbed. A little further on, the long and low white cottage Yeats once lived in stops me dead, as it always does, to read the semi-distempered over-blue plaque singing his words to me.
I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams. So I do tread on, lightened in mind and foot, watching a horizon-bound schooner go it alone, scarlet-sailed on turquoise water. Dawn Cottage is behind me now, creamy, inch-high wild roses lining the cliff path's rough-footed beginnings. I pant upwards through the prickling gorse strands to that first curve.
There, even the gulls mute their cries, scraping the cliff sides in swoops so far below me that my eyes widen at the black-backed beauty of their gliding wings. Far, far off, the Wicklow Hills, courtesy to the yellow sun, like graceful ladies delicately dropping mist-grey gauze wraps from their shoulders. And oh look, there's the Kish Lightship, and God bless my long-distance eyesight anyway.
It's a day to believe that mysterious grey shaping on the horizon is the Welsh coastline. No mystery, though, about the white campion flowers carpeting towards the aquamarine water like snowflakes, springtime's purpley-blue violets and bluebells half-hidden amongst them. Grey-green fern fronds pause in the act of unfurling. Bees buzz in a frenzy.
A comatose, honey-drunk bumblebee lets my forefinger stroke his furry back before I put on speed again. Faster, faster, onwards to the recuperative granite block seat opposite the gannet colony inlet a quarter of a mile on.
Our territory, shrieked the sheer rock-faced inhabitants, their grim grey cliff only flashed and dashed to life by ceaseless white feathery flights and years-long guano streakings. The water swirls white and wicked at the base, even today, aiding and abetting their inaccessibility.
Just beyond the inlet, black cormorants plop and play from islanded amber rock outcrops, before settling down to preen their sleekness sleeker, long necks sometimes stretching as if listening, as I do, to the faint heat-haze pooh-poohs of the foghorn dwindling to silence, as well it might now the sunshine glitters Killiney Hill's house windows into diamonds.
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