A Dutch man who walked barefoot from Los Angeles to Instances Sq. to lift consciousness for males’s psychological well being and set a Guinness World Document accomplished his 260-day journey on Saturday.
Anton Nootenboom, an Military veteran, mentioned the very first thing he’ll do after strolling 3,100 miles over eight and a half months is placed on a pair of footwear and socks.
“They’ll be there, proper on the end line,” Nootenboom, 37, advised The Publish on Thursday from Staten Island.
“I virtually forgot what it looks like.”
So as to set the world file, he was not allowed to have something on his toes whereas he walked, not even a Band-Support.
He may have worn socks and footwear whereas taking breaks, however determined to not — so the final time he had something contact his toes apart from asphalt and concrete was Feb. 17, the day he launched into the intrepid trek.
Nootenboom, generally known as “The Barefoot Dutchman” with 1.3 million individuals following his journey through his Fb, Instagram and TikTok pages, mentioned the expedition was onerous on his tootsies.
“They’ve been via the desert and snow. There’s undoubtedly been small shards of damaged glass. When a automobile tire blows, there’s steel pins in them, so I needed to pull them out of my foot rather a lot,” he mentioned.
“The primary month or so was essentially the most fascinating as a result of my pores and skin was nonetheless fairly tender … after which you might have the concrete of the roads, it turns into like sandpaper. And little rocks would simply go inside these wounds.”
His girlfriend and canine accompanied him in a camper van.
“The place we sleep each evening is a full shock. We by no means know the place we’re going to finish up. Within the greater cities, it’s Walmart parking heaps — they bought a rest room,” he defined.
“However out West, after all, it’s simply primarily desert. So we had been simply tenting in the midst of nowhere, surviving on canned meals. We slept in numerous nationwide forests.”
Often, they stayed in accommodations in a single day to bathe — and different visitors had been shocked by Nootenboom’s lack of footwear and “take a look at me like I’m from Mars or one thing,” he mentioned.
Good Samaritans they met alongside the way in which additionally supplied their houses as lodging.
“We might meet them at a canine park or a espresso store, wherever. And we’d simply begin chatting about what we had been doing and they’d simply invite us to remain at their home,” he mentioned.
Nootenboom, who served within the Dutch Military for 10 years and did three excursions in Afghanistan, timed the top of his voyage to coincide with Movember, the annual fundraising marketing campaign for males’s well being, and has raised over $40,000 to this point.
When he left the Military, he bought all his possessions and determined to journey, which ultimately took a toll on his psychological well being, and in 2018, he fell right into a deep melancholy.
“It was heartbreak, monetary strain, not being in the best job … I ended up again in a hostel … I used to be in my bunk mattress, in my early 30s, realizing that I absolutely misplaced my very own id,” he defined.
“For 10 years, all I needed to do was simply fake I used to be a bush. I had this very goal-driven life within the Military … and now all of the sudden I had no course.”
Nootenboom was residing close to the seashores of Sydney, Australia when he started strolling barefoot, which he mentioned is frequent there, to maintain his thoughts occupied.
He shortly found that strolling sans footwear or socks was serving to his psyche.
“I all the time thought it was a bunch of hippie stuff. However then I began to really feel that the cost of the earth, it holds a sure power, and we’re purported to be strolling barefoot, so we are able to get that power,” he defined. “You begin to create the glad chemical substances as soon as your naked toes contact the earth.”
His persona “The Barefoot Dutchman” was born in 2019, after he went to the bottom camp of Mount Everest barefoot, a feat that had by no means been achieved prior.
He already set the file for longest barefoot stroll in 2021, when he trekked the roughly 1,900 miles from Cairns to Sydney. In January, a Polish man, Pawel Durakiewicz, broke that file, and Nootenboom reached out to him.
“I despatched him a message like, ‘I’m so sorry, man, however I’m about to do virtually double that,’” he mentioned.
Nootenboom mentioned he plans to finish extra world data.
“I’ll by no means do one thing as huge as this once more, let me say that,” he mentioned.
“There are world data you are able to do in a day or two.”
