I ran 1,400 miles around Ireland

"As a long-distance runner, I had always wanted to use running as a means of travel, a way to traverse a landscape. I'd heard of people running across Africa, or the length of New Zealand, and the idea of embarking on an epic journey propelled only by my own two legs was compelling. I had just turned 50, and some might have said I was having a mid-life crisis, but I preferred to envisage it as a sort of pilgrimage"

"And so I concocted a mad plan to run around the entire island of Ireland. I'd start in Dublin, the birthplace of my mother, and run down through the Wicklow mountains, all the way to Cork in the far south, before making my way up the Wild Atlantic Way, up past Galway, the birthplace of my father, home of the Finns, up to Donegal in the north, on through Northern Ireland, and then south to finish back in Dublin. A mere 1,400 miles."

A long-distance runner set out at age 50 to run around the island of Ireland as a personal pilgrimage to connect with ancestral roots. Childhood visits created a sense of familiarity, but the runner sought deeper, intimate knowledge of the landscape. The route began in Dublin, crossed the Wicklow mountains to Cork, followed the Wild Atlantic Way past Galway to Donegal, traversed Northern Ireland and returned to Dublin, totaling about 1,400 miles. The journey took just under ten weeks with an average of more than 20 miles per day while a wife and son supported the expedition from a motorhome. Many days were solitary runs through rolling farmland, with encounters and changing rural and coastal scenery.

Read at www.theguardian.com