Video: Woman plans to run 2,620 miles across the length of the UK completely barefoot

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Video: Woman plans to run 2,620 miles across the length of the UK completely barefoot

2019-05-25 20:08 Last Updated At：20:09

Anna McNuff started to run barefoot after witnessing people in New Zealand doing it – and decided to give it a go herself.

A female adventurer and former GB rower, who claims to have been “feral” as a child, has shared her plans to run 2,620 miles across the length of the UK, completely barefoot.

A Girl Guides ambassador and motivational speaker, Gloucester-based Anna McNuff, 34 – whose parents also rowed for Great Britain in the Olympics – has been running extreme distances across the world since 2013 – but usually in top-of-the range £100 Brooks sports shoes.

Her barefoot epiphany came during a 2015 trip to New Zealand, when she ran 1,911 miles across the country over 148 days and, inspired by the number of barefoot runners she encountered, after 1,000 miles kicked off her shoes.

A tomboy through and through growing up, she immediately fell into the barefoot running groove, saying: “I was a little bit feral as a child and used to like running around with grazed knees and muddy feet.

“I was always mucking in with my brothers and the boys at school – I think it was only when I was about 20 that I realised I was female!

“My instinct had always been not to wear shoes and I remember my mum always telling me to put them on.”

She continued: “Now, while I’m not a barefoot evangelist, I love it and it has made such an impact on my running style.”

Despite her love of going shoeless as a youngster, growing older, Anna began to conform.

But, inspired by her New Zealand trip, she said: “People there are much happier to run and play sport barefoot, so I thought to myself, ‘Why am I wearing trainers when our feet are built to be free?'”

On returning to the home she shares with her partner Jamie McDonald, 32, a fellow adventurer and motivational speaker, she continued to jog barefoot.

Now, speaking of her next UK running challenge, which will take from June to November, she said: “Feet are amazing, complex machines with over 7,000 nerve endings in each sole and 26 bones in each foot.

“So, in this adventure I’m looking to see if I can coax my feet into doing what they were truly built to do, after a lifetime of being squidged up in shoes.”

Despite her rowing coach mum Sue, 62, and consultant dad Ian, 62, being incredibly sporty, Anna – who has two brothers, accountant Jonty, 32, and project manager Jamie, 36, – recalls her mother’s displeasure at her barefoot antics as a child.

Anna laughed: “In typical mothering fashion, she was always telling me to put some shoes on and keep my feet warm in case I caught a cold.”

A GB rower, although not an Olympian, Anna stopped competing aged 23 and went to work in marketing before getting the sporting itch again and setting off to cycle 11,000 miles around America in 2013.

Since then, her love of adventure has only grown and has seen her complete some ambitious escapades, like a cycle along the Andes mountains and running the 86-mile length of Hadrian’s Wall dressed as a Roman soldier.

Anna, who earns a living giving motivational talks to companies and schoolchildren, then set her sights on running across New Zealand – where she finally freed her feet.

She explained: “It was really liberating to realise that I didn’t have to wear trainers and that this was a way of exercising that people in other parts of the world actually did.”

In England, she graduated her descent into barefoot running, working down from trainers, to shoes, to socks and finally daring to go bare.

Even the inevitable – and often unpleasant – hazards she has encountered have not put her off.

She continued: “I have occasionally stepped on broken glass and in dog mess. But that’s all part of the experience and you pretty quickly grow hard callouses and thick skin on the bottom of your feet.”

Not everyone understands her running style, however, and she has received everything from snide comments to strangers offering to give her their shoes.

She said: “It took a little while to rebalance my muscles and there were times, at first, when I’d stagger home after running barefoot.

“It feels great now, though. I am lighter on my toes, my joints are under less strain and my thigh and calf muscles have become a lot more toned.

She added: “As for my feet – they’re like panther paws!”

In June, Anna will be starting her next mammoth challenge in the Shetland Islands and will finish in London – covering the distance of a full marathon most days for 155 days.

“I think it’s something I know I would be able to do wearing shoes, but going barefoot will be a real challenge – which makes it all the more exciting,” said Anna, who is encouraging others to join her at various stages along the way.

She continued: “I admit it’s pretty daunting, too, and I’m terrified that some sort of showstopper event will happen along the way that may prevent me from running.”

But Anna, who will be speaking at girl guiding units along the way, hopes to encourage girls to push themselves beyond their comfort zones.

“The world has become very sanitised these days and people are wrapped up in cotton wool,” she said.

She concluded: “I’m not saying that everyone should be like me and run around with no shoes on, but sometimes doing things that are a little unusual and which stand outside societal norms are the most rewarding of all.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. picks Nicole Shanahan as his running mate for his independent White House bid

2024-03-27 06:47 Last Updated At：06:51

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose Nicole Shanahan on Tuesday to be his vice presidential pick, adding a wealthy but nationally unknown figure to his independent White House bid that's trying to appeal to voters disaffected by a rematch of the 2020 election.

Shanahan, 38, is a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office. She leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes.

Kennedy, a former Democrat, made the announcement in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was raised in an impoverished family.

“Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party," he said. "Our values didn’t change. The Democratic Party did.”

Kennedy’s campaign has spooked Democrats, who are fighting third-party options that could draw support from President Joe Biden and help former President Donald Trump. But allies for both Biden and Trump attacked Kennedy and Shanahan on Tuesday, reflecting the uncertainty about how Americans might respond to an independent ticket that has little chance of winning Electoral College votes but could draw votes across the spectrum.

Without the backing of a party, Kennedy faces an arduous task to get on the ballot, with varying rules across the 50 states. He’s picking a running mate now because about half of the states require him to designate one before he can apply for ballot access.

Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.

In Nevada, Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a March 7 letter to independent candidates that they must nominate a vice presidential candidate before collecting signatures. The letter came days after Kennedy’s campaign announced he’d collected enough signatures in the state.

Kennedy acknowledged the hurdles he faces and urged Americans to “take a risk” and vote for him, saying the biggest obstacle to his campaign is the belief that he can't win.

“If Nicole and I can get Americans to refuse to vote from fear, we’re going to be in the White House in November,” he said.

In a nearly 30-minute speech introducing herself to Kennedy supporters, Shanahan echoed the critique at the heart of Kennedy's campaign — that both major parties, the media and the U.S. government are beholden to greedy profiteers. She also embraced his discredited anti-vaccine message.

“It wasn’t until I met Bobby and people supporting him that I felt any hope in the outcome of this election,” Shanahan said.

Formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Shanahan is deeply enmeshed in the Silicon Valley technology culture that Kennedy frequently critiques.

But he said her connections would help her confront the tech industry's power and influence, and her knowledge of artificial intelligence could steer the government to nurture transformative technologies.

Outside the performing arts venue where Kennedy announced his pick, broken-down cars, discarded bicycles, tents and all manner of household goods took up the sidewalk and a park, a visual reminder of the housing crisis that has plagued California.

Dawn Mitchell, a 52-year-old retired Army reservist and U.S. Postal Service worker from Chesapeake, Virginia, said she was vacationing in Los Angeles when she heard Kennedy would be appearing in Oakland and decided to make the six-hour drive to hear him and Shanahan.

“I didn’t really know her before, but just listening to her and listening to her passion about helping children and the chronic disease epidemic and regenerative farming, I’m pretty impressed by her,” she said.

Speakers who entertained the crowd before Kennedy took the stage included Angela Stanton-King, a woman pardoned by then-President Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring that led to a 2004 federal conspiracy conviction and two years in prison; Metta World Peace, the NBA all-star player formerly known as Ron Artest; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford Medical School professor who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential launch event last year.

The Democratic National Committee is gearing up to take on Kennedy and other third-party options, including No Labels, a well-funded group working to recruit a centrist ticket. The effort is overseen by veteran strategist Mary Beth Cahill, whose resume includes chief of staff to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, another of RFK Jr.’s uncles.

Some members of his family have publicly criticized his views. Dozens of Kennedy family members sent a message when they posed with Biden at a St. Patrick’s Day reception at the White House in a photo his sister Kerry Kennedy posted to social media.

“He’s a spoiler. He’s tried to coast on his family legacy and the goodwill they have in the African American community,” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said of Kennedy on a conference call with reporters organized by the DNC. “But the Kennedy family has denounced this lame attempt and they’ve quite frankly stood with President Biden.”

Republicans, likewise, worry Kennedy's anti-establishment bent and skepticism about the response to COVID-19 could entice voters who might otherwise vote for Trump.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a far-left radical that supports reparations, backs the Green New Deal, and wants to ban fracking," said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesperson for the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. “It’s no surprise he would pick a Biden donor leftist as his running mate.”

Kennedy is a descendant of a storied Democratic family that includes his father, Robert F. Kennedy, who was a U.S. senator, attorney general and presidential candidate, and his uncle former President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was a teenager when his father, known as RFK, was assassinated during his own presidential campaign in 1968. RFK Jr. built a reputation of his own as an activist, author and lawyer who fought for environmental causes such as clean water.

Along the way, his activism has veered into conspiracies and contradicted scientific consensus, most infamously on vaccines.

An anti-vaccine group Kennedy led has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

Video: Woman plans to run 2,620 miles across the length of the UK completely barefoot

News

Video: Woman plans to run 2,620 miles across the length of the UK completely barefoot

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