“If you want to achieve big things, you gotta take risks,” says Vini Cardoso (41), who will be undertaking a 2,200km run around Ireland this August.
Having moved to Ireland in 2008, the Brazilian wants to express his “gratitude to Ireland for all these years that I’ve loved this country”. He will be running around the circumference of Ireland to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).
Mr Cardoso’s journey, which he estimates will take two months, will be just be him and his backpack containing his tent, food and water.
He is fundraising for the RNLI to pay homage to his friends who volunteer for them. He spoke of his admiration for one friend who, in some instances, has been eating dinner before getting a call to rescue someone.
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“Many times he would come back at six, seven in the morning when I was waking up for work the next day.”
Another friend, Ronan Murphy, has been volunteering for the RNLI for almost 13 years. He divides his time between working as a firefighter, a paramedic and running a gym in Howth, where he met Mr Cardoso more than 10 years ago.
Mr Murphy said even though Mr Cardoso is from Brazil “he’s more Irish than most people I know”.
He said Mr Cardoso will be “seen as one of our own” in the RNLI for taking on the challenge.
Mr Cardoso will be using the RNLI lifeboat stations as “supply stations”, which he will send food and water to in advance, to be collected along his journey.
Mr Cardoso, an artist and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teacher, began running long distances following the death of his father a few years ago. He “needed something different” to focus his attention on and “started running around the fields in Howth”.
“I always knew that for me, I would never be able to run and win races, but I understand that there is something about the long distances. I like that long journey, it’s a very mental thing.”
Last year, he ran The Ireland Way, a 1,000km walking and cycling trail which took him from west Cork to the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim. He said the journey led him to notice “how welcoming people were” in many parts of the country.
“Some people invited me to come into their house, offered me a place to stay, a nice comfortable bed, shower, dinner. For me, that was something beautiful to experience.”
Since moving to Ireland, a country he says he fell in love with, Mr Cardoso has been teaching himself Irish. He has “learned a few words and sentences here and there”, and in the past year has been “going deeper, learning the structure of the language”.
He hopes to put it to use on his upcoming run. “If I pass through the Gaeltacht in Connemara, Galway, I would try to immerse myself into the culture, at least learn a little bit. Maybe order some báinne [milk] or uisce [water].”
The mental preparation he has undertaken for the journey has been considerable. He says it is “about understanding where my mind is gonna go, how my feelings or my mind is gonna react when I find myself sitting in a tent with nobody to talk to”. He says the journey will force him to “be present in the moment and appreciate the solitude”.
“Being alone is a very powerful thing”.
However, Mr Cardoso is used to being alone in such a way, spending many Fridays after work camping in the Wicklow mountains on “a little night out”.
To physically prepare, he runs between 15 and 20km a day, going further on weekends. He wears a heavy backpack to ready himself for what he’ll be carrying during the journey, which he says will be between 14 and 18kg of supplies.
He also does strength training with a friend who is a coach, and mobility training to stay flexible. He will “go with the flow”, and if there’s a day where he can’t keep going, he will allow himself to rest, he says.
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His family in Brazil are “big supporters” of his plan. His mother is encouraging, but remains cautious and worries about his safety.
“This is life, we gotta take risks,” he said.
His friend Mr Murphy will be checking in with Mr Cardoso every day through texts and calls.
Mr Cardoso will be posting daily video content of his progress on his Instagram, @vini_on_earth.
