Also more recently, my wife and I went away last Thursday and Friday up to the Galgorm Manor near Ballymena (small town Northern Ireland). There's loads of cool grounds and forests etc to run in the area, so Friday morn I got up early and went for a run before breakfast.
The Galgorm provided a map with running routes on it and I'd scoped out where was good for barefootin the day before and had a route in mind. Problem being I'd not run the route didn't really know what was at the far end of it.
It said to run through the forest and you come out in a village and the run the road back. Sounded great…
The forest was great, some tough stony areas and some ridged poured concrete but in all not too bad. I only passed a couple of people on the way and they were polite enough about the lack of shoes.
But come the end of the forest trail, I came out in to the village…
Think Deliverance meets Hostel.
The worst thing, I find, about running barefoot isn't the pain underfoot, not the blisters (from my far from perfect technique) or standing on rogue stones, no it's passing other people, members of the public. People here aren't shy of a stare and a comment.
Now multiply this by twenty as I'm running through a backwater village where they normally burn anything that's different.
Firstly, and I didn't think this through, it was village rush hour. There were many, many people and cars about.
I just went for it. Running up the pavement trying to look normal.
Very early on I received a load honks from cars I passed in the queue of traffic. (I can deal with that), however to my horror, I could see a barefoot runners worst nightmare up ahead. A high school. Not one with big grounds, no, it was like a shop front. Only a footpath's width from the road with about 50 or 60 kids standing outside waiting. One thing I learned from sketching and drawing out in public is that kids are brutally honest. They will happily tell you exactly what they think. So, hey, at my first available opportunity I crossed the road and hoped the queue of honking traffic would hide the barefootedness and I'd just breeze on by unnoticed.
And honestly, that went well, for all of about 30 seconds. I passed the school lollipop lady and cheerily said hello, only to be met with a look that wouldn't have been out of place if I'd have flashed her.
But coming towards me was a lorry, and from that vantage point up high, he could see the bare feet and decided to give me a Smokey and the Bandit style honk of the horn and a thumbs up. It was a bit a like a Zombie movie, where someone is trying to creep past a hoard of hungry zombies and clatters in to a stack of kitchen pans knocking them flying. The whole lot of them turned and from behind me I heard the sound of zombie groaning of hoards of kids noticing a crazy barefoot guy trying to sneak by. "Oh my god, look at him!!!!", "Look!!", "He's got no shoes on!". I just kept on running (what else could I do??).
Soon I could hear lots of footsteps coming up behind me, shouting and whooping. Seriously, I felt like a freakin wildebeest getting chased down by a pride of lions. Before long a kid of about 14 or 15 appeared beside me, and with a big dumb grin he said "How are yaaaaa!?". Lol, I didn't know what to say to him. It was like one of those dreams where you realise you've no clothes on.
I just put on the most comical broad Ballymena accent and said loudly "Ahhright, how are yaaa!? Are ya digging the lack of shoes????".
I don't know if it was the crazy accent, the crazy look in my eyes, the fact the he might have realised I was running barefoot deliberately and hadn't just been kicked out of my mistress's house in my shorts and shoeless, …but they dropped back immediately.
Honestly it was a relief. The honking of horns and weird looks from the remainder of the public I passed were bearable compared to the whooping and taunting of a load of school kids.
To top it off, the road back to the Galgorm was pretty much footpathless and I was running on the road itself, on windy corners with crazy country drivers and farm machinery passing me every minute or so. My feet were mangled when I got back. Many blisters! The technique went out the window in favour of getting the heck outta there.
In a place where they normally gather with pitchforks and torch anything that's different, I'm just glad to have gotten outta there in one piece. For years to come the people of Cullybackey will speak of the day the guy with no shoes on ran through their village. With no explanation as to who he was or why it happened I fear I may have become the stuff of legend, uttered only under ones breath in fireside stories to children. I'll appear on future tourist pamphlets and guides as the ghost runner of Cullybackey, barefoot and shrieking.