The Joy of Running

“And those that were dancing were thought to be insane by those that could not hear the music.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.

Sometimes I do stupid shit that seems like the best idea in the world. At the end of August, I got up one rare sunny morning with the thought that I would run about 10 miles around Galway. 

I ran the first mile or so as the sun was still below the horizon and felt myself awed by its orange glow as it gradually started to poke itself above it, igniting the sky in shades of deep orange. About a mile and a half into my run I stopped running so as to take a picture with my phone as I thought it looked quite magnificent shining through some trees. Sometimes the rising sun fills me with a euphoric optimism, while at the same time I wonder how many more of them I will get to see in my brief span of existence on this earth. 

Today, I am grateful to have legs, even though they are a bit bandy and probably would not win me any prizes in a lovely legs competition. They might be a bit bandy, but they are my bandy legs and I am grateful that they are working relatively well today.

There were years in my life I cursed my legs as I couldn’t run. I had sciatica running from my back down into my foot and the only time I was moderately comfortable was when lying in bed, and even then, it was sore. My knees hurt, my hips hurt, and I genuinely thought I would need a hip replacement by the time I hit 40 (I was in my twenties at this stage). But fast forward almost twenty years and I am running better than I ever thought possible in my 20s. All thanks to nature, by which I mean renouncing the “normal” shoes that 99% of people wear; opting instead for “barefoot” shoes.

People sometimes comment: “How can you wear those yolks; sure they have no support in them. You need a good pair of shoes with daycent support”. I have often replied: “Sure isn’t there plenty of support in the ground,” but I’m bored of this reply and now just reply: “If you say so.” They’re often the types of people that tell me: “That auld running is bad for ya” and I ask why, and they tell me that it ruins the joints, and that you’re better off just doing a bit of walking. And I ask if walking is bad for the joints and they reply no, or that you don’t wear out your joints as quickly with walking as it isn’t as hard on the body. Such folks sound as absurd to me as one bird saying to another: “You shouldn’t be doing too much of that auld flying, tis bad for the wings.” If wings are made to fly then surely legs were made to run and walk upon and to suggest that running or walking is bad for the legs is quite an absurd statement that everyone who makes it seems blissfully unaware of.

So, anyway, I started my run on this particular day in a pair of “Merrell Vapor Gloves 6” which are a “barefoot” shoe, and which I have been a loyal customer of for several years now, until this version, as the durability is very poor, with holes worn in the soles after a mere 200 miles, while I got 500-1000 miles out of previous editions. On the other hand, they are the most stylish and comfortable version to date, but I digress.

As the sun is coming up, I feel myself in the mood to listen to something; I consider an audiobook, but my brain is too restless, and so I start listening to Guns ‘N’ Roses and by the end of the day I have ploughed through four studio albums, and part of a live album. I loved GNR as a teenager, and used to have one band t-shirt for every day of the week and my walls plastered with posters. I didn’t really listen to them at all for years, thinking I had outgrown them and that a lot of the lyrics were a bit daft, but this day just feels like a Guns ‘N’ Roses sort of day and as I am no spring chicken, reminiscing on a bit of teenage angsty energy is exactly what I need to propel myself forwards.

I run into town via the line and spontaneously veer towards the Old Long Walk and the Claddagh at which point I decide I might as well keep the train that is me going as far as Salthill, seen as it’s such a grand day and it might be raining tomorrow. I feel insanely energised considering I have already run 65 miles during the week. 

At the Claddagh, I am wowed by the reflection on the water and so stop to take a picture with my phone. I posted it online afterwards and received a message asking me what camera I used and I think they were a bit surprised when I said I took it with my phone.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” is blaring in my ears as I’m trundling along and I’m like a self-propelled mobile silent disco and don’t really care about anything in the world at this moment.

When I get to the diving tower in Salthill I feel as inexorable as a tidal wave and there can be no stopping now and so I decide to extend my run as far as Barna woods. On the way I stop to photograph a couple of donkeys that are always in the field near there. I don’t know why, but donkeys always give me a cheerful feeling. I guess maybe they are the animal equivalent of comedians and why, when someone is being humorous, we might call them a donkey. Horses, on the other hand, have a kind of noble disposition and elicit entirely different connotations, perhaps of strength, kings, and snobbery. 

At about 8 miles in, I’m feeling quite thirsty, so I stop at a petrol station and buy a pint of milk and a 750ml bottle of water. I chug the milk down in one go, and toss the carton in the bin, proceeding with the water in my fist towards Barna Woods.

In Barna Woods, I see a shaft of light shining through the gaps in the overhead foliage of the trees. It casts its rays on a log and I think it looks quite heavenly and so my phone comes out again to take a picture. I then run through the woods and around Cappagh Park to the sounds of GNR Patience and the lyrics “I sit here on the stairs cos I’d rather be alone” take me back nearly thirty years, sitting on the stairs smoking cigarettes, at a school disco while the friends I went with were all slobbering the faces off of some girl in the school hall. Music is like that, it can make you feel like you are in two time zones at the same time, and so it can be a reminder of who you once were, and how you once felt, and it makes you realise that that which once was you, will always be you in some way, no matter how much you think you’ve changed or how many years have elapsed between these two specific points in the time zone of your life.

I make my way out of the park and through Knocknacarra, towards the running track in Westside, where I think that I will clock my mileage up to about 17 so that by the end of the day I will have done an even 20 (I live about 3 miles from the track). I make my way to the Evergreen health shop so as to buy a few gels, but they don’t have any, and so I pop into Dunnes Stores beside it and buy a bottle of original Lucozade, a bottle of water, a jumbo packet of sour cream and onion crisps, and a punnet of Blueberries and head back to the track. I devore all of the above, while still trundling on, and feel a huge sugar rush filling my brain.

“Fucked up and out of place, was how I felt back then. Double talkin’ jive get the money motherfucka cos I got no more patience” are the lyrics blasting through my cranium as the GNR silent disco with one attendee keeps going on this warm Saturday in August. Around and around the track I go, when I shall stop, nobody knows. But I do know. I’m going to stop running around the track at mile 17 as my adjusted target is to run 20 miles for the day.

At mile 17, according to my Garmin, I start heading for home. The battery in my phone is getting a bit low, and I’m feeling quite tired at this stage, and so I think I’m definitely going to call it a day at 20 miles. And then “Civil War” by GNR starts with the audio clip from Cool Hand Luke: “What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men, you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week -- which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men.” Cool Hand Luke was positively one of my favourite films of all time. Played by Paul Newman, the title character, Luke, is someone who appears to see the whole world as absurd and refuses adamantly to bend to its absurdity. He goes to jail for getting drunk and cutting the heads off of parking metres and when he gets arrested, he smiles. No matter what happens to him, or who tries to beat him down, he looks on everything with amusement and subsequently becomes a hero to the other members of the chain gang he finds himself acquainted with. And so, I decide at mile 20 that I will stop to charge my phone for ten minutes and keep the train/mobile disco that is me going for another while for “no particular reason at all” as Forest Gump put it. I figured since I had done 20 miles, I might as well do another 6.2 miles so as to make my distance a marathon. It’d be a shame not to really, I think, and so I do.

I run down to the local beach and clock up around 4 or 5 miles fairly comfortably with “You could be mine, but you’re way out of line” blasting in my ears. I am ravenously hungry at this stage, and feel like I could devour my own arm. I’m also feeling charged up, extraordinarily euphoric, alive, and I don’t want this party to end, it all feels too good, too perfect, and I want this feeling to keep going. I feel like I’m right at the edge of a supreme state of psychological Nirvana at which point all the mysteries of the universe will become known to me and I will be just about as at peace with existence as anyone, anywhere, could ever hope to be. At this point, I am less than 10 miles off of a 100-mile week and so I decide I might as well keep going, but I need to stop at the shop.

At the shop, I pickup a jumbo bag of crisps, a Kingsize Cornetto, a bag of jellies and a bottle of Lipton Iced Tea. A lady ahead of me in the queue looks at me a bit inquisitively as at this stage my skin is as salty as a bag of chips and my body is pulsing with energy so much that standing relatively still in a queue takes extreme effort. All my nerve endings are demanding that I continue on my noble quest; that stopping could be dangerous as my body might start seizing up on me. And if my body seizes up, I won’t be able to attain my goal of running 100 miles for the week, which for some reason seems extraordinarily important at this moment in time, even though it probably isn’t. I explain to her that I have just run a marathon and she seems a little perplexed and tells me to be sure and drink something. At the counter, I try to tap my phone to pay for my purchases, but for some reason the reader doesn’t respond. I have no wallet, and so it’s crucial that I get these supplies. I try again and again, but the card machine won’t recognise my phone, and I don’t know why. A queue is forming behind me and I can feel their impatience seeping into my veins, demanding that I stop being such a nuisance and get out of their way so as they can go on about their day. I ask the girl to cancel the transaction and run it through again, which she does. And while she’s doing so, I make sure the brightness of my phone is all the way up and I also give it a wipe. Lo and behold it works, and I’m on my way again. I wolf down the ice cream and the tea and stuff a handful of jellies in my mouth as I start making my way back towards town.

This time, when I reach the Claddagh, I veer up the canal at the back of the Roisin Dubh. I’ve listened to most of all of the GNR albums at this stage and so press on a randomly created Spotify playlist, the first song on which is Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and at this point I decide to start singing out loud as I am running, like an out-and-out looney bin, cos life is better when you let yourself go a little bit crazy sometimes. The following quote, which I once saw on a fridge magnet, and has been attributed to Mark Twain, echoes through my brain: “Sing like no one is listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like no one is watching, and live like it is heaven on earth.” 

Unabashedly singing out loud to “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis, I pass some young ladies who are tittering away at the crazy man that is me trundling along the road singing along to the sounds of music that only he himself can hear. I understand their amusement and I don’t give a fiddler’s fart and flash a smile at them. “And those that were dancing were thought to be insane by those that could not hear the music.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.

I run along the canal and through the college, smiling at, and greeting, everyone I see as if they were my best friends and I was thoroughly delighted to see them alive and kicking on this gloriously sunny day. I find myself greeting one particular couple, that looked like they might be Indian, with a hearty “Good morning” but then I realise that it is no longer morning, but rather afternoon at this stage, and I feel like a bit of a loony for not having realised that, and I feel like shouting after them to correct myself. “Delerium,” I think, “you have reached a state of delirium.” But I feel on top of the gosh darn world.

I’m tipping over the 30 miles mark by the time I get to the Quincentennial bridge and I run a little beyond it, up along by the Corrib River, before turning around, climbing the steps of the bridge and heading for home.

“I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane” is blasting in my ears now and I’m feeling just about as high as one, and singing along to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ song as if the lyrics were divine words sent by God himself.

Nearly at 35 miles, I head towards the local beach, finally tipping the 35-mile mark and hitting the stop button on my watch. I had run 35 miles at just under 11 minutes per mile pace and an old man on a bench beside me when I stopped asked if I had had a good run. “Pretty good,” I replied. Then he asks me if I ever ran around the tarmacked area up by Mellow’s pitch and I say, “Ya, a few times, today” and I also inform him that I ran all around the town today and had clocked a total of 35 miles. “Jesus,” he says, “are you training for the marathon?” And I reply, “Nope, I’m training for nothing” and wish him a great day.

Around this time, my dear mother rings me and I inform her, proudly, that I had just run 35 miles, and I expect her to find my feat amazing, but her tone just sounds annoyed and she says: “You fecking ejit, wearing yourself out for nothing when you said you’d mow the lawn for me today for god’s sake.” I inform her that I would still mow the lawn for her, even though every fibre of my body is worn out and I feel like I just want to lie down and not move again for the rest of the weekend. I have to mow the lawn though, my word is my bond, even though at this stage the prospect of doing so feels far more like an exercise in extreme endurance than the 35 miles I have just run. The prospect sounds like such a difficult task that it might as well be climbing Everest or something, but I guess it’s a much more useful thing to do than that, even though it, too, seems kind of pointless as the bloody grass just grows again anyway.

:)