Idly, the sun-seekers observe them bobbing across the smooth and copper-gold dunes, lazily dismissing them as lunatics before drifting back towards their books again. March in Gran Canaria is not torturously warm, mid-20s generally, but as Paul and Richard Donovan turn their backs on the sea and face the monotonous stretch of rolling sand, they feel vulnerable.
Their initial pace, boyish and optimistic, soon gives way to a leaden, lurching drag. The sand quickly becomes hateful, glued to the sweat and cream on their faces, stinging their eyes, brimming their trainers as they traverse the ceaseless undulations. Always underfoot are the billions of grains, slipping and giving way, mocking them.
Fifteen minutes in and Paul Donovan feels nervous. Here he is, 35-years-old with a stiff knee, expecting to fly out to the Sahara in April to run 230-km under burning skies in just a week. And here he is, half spooked by the loneliness of a light jog in baby dunes.
Only now was Morocco becoming a reality. Perhaps they were kidding themselves. They had heard about the Marathon des Sables well over a year ago, seen the video glorying in the wretched and beaten, those dehydrated, maggot-footed losers desperate to subscribe again. Bit of pain, sure, but a fine way to honour the memory of their father. Gerard, the eldest and exiled in the States, was also up for it. The Donovan boys out running. It would be just like old times. Now, though, doubt ripped through Paul. He felt scared at the immensity of the Saharan race. Simultaneously, he and Richard stopped, slapped hands on knees and stood panting.
"I don't think Gerard is going to make it," grinned Richard. "I don't think I am," returned Paul. Richard looked at his brother. They say he might have been a superstar.
IT COSTS $2,500 to compete in the Marathon Des Sables, which is in turn both an excruciating, futile pursuit of blisters, sunstroke, fear and humiliation and a celestial, transcendental path toward beatification. All depends on whether you manage to cross the finish line.
It was dreamed up by a Frenchman, Patrick Bauer, in 1986 and carries for competitors the same sense of hypnotic foreboding and addictive appeal as Everest does for climbers.
Over the past decade, the race has provided its fair share of melodrama. A guy called Yves Pol completed every leg of the first race walking backwards. A 19-year-old with a heart defect, Jean Luc Provence, died (there is a compulsory body repatriation fee). In 1990, a 73-year-old American completed the race. Italian Mauro Prosperi, an Olympic gold medallist, vanished in the midst of a flash sandstorm and was found some nine days later, wandering in western Algeria, four stone lighter. He immediately applied for entry to the following year's race. These, then, are the kind of random vagabonds that the Donovans of Mervue, Galway, will walk and run and fall with come April 5th. The idea was conceived after their father, Paul Snr, passed away suddenly last April. Among Paul Donovan's many beliefs was the right to non-believe and he donated his body to science. Hence, the family have no physical monument at which to honour his memory.
"Well, we feel that his energy, his spirit is still about us," says Richard. "It isn't that important having a grave or anything. What he left was just a body. But he is still about us and we feel that running this race, making some sort of sacrifice, would be a good way of honouring a man we obviously feel was unique." An impish 32-year-old, he has been pounding the damp tar outside Galway city every evening since the new year, clocking up 10 miles per day. An economics consultant in Galway, he piled on the pounds pen-pushing and is only now approaching his optimum weight. "If our father knew what we were at, he'd probably say, `feckin' eejits, have they nothing better to do with their time'. But I think he'd be secretly pleased that the boys were getting together again. He'd definitely relish the sight of us suffering." Their father was a Corkonian, who left school at an early age and settled in Galway where he became an engineer and a high-profile campaigner for travellers' rights in the 1970s.
"He would face residential mobs pretty fearlessly. I remember at one stage there was big media interest in it all. He was in newspapers and on that Seven Days programme. We were all young at the time, but it didn't occur to us that there was anything unusual about it. It was as though he had a right to be there."
There were eight kids in the Donovan household, six of whom went through college. They all seem imbued with an incredibly keen instinct to excel, which is reflected in the resumes of the three brothers. Take Gerard, now 38, for example. The two-time Irish bronze medallist at judo is also an Irish guitar society gold medallist and a former professional classical guitarist. He has two books of poetry in print and is now writing a thriller. That's just for kicks. For work, he pursued a Masters in German and creative writing and now lectures in English at a university in upstate New York. It is, by any stretch, an outrageously well-rounded CV.
"I think he did all those things sequentially," says Paul. "Like, after he was satisfied with his guitar playing, he rarely picked the thing up again. Maybe we all exact high standards from ourselves, but it wasn't ever a case of being pressured by the folks. We made our own minds up."
From a young age, Paul decided that he was US-bound. Whatever the combination of talents in the house, he was the natural. Purely a runner. The mother's favourite. He ran for the University of Arkansas in the early '80s. By the age of 23, he was the dominant NCAA middle distance runner and took a silver medal at the World Indoor Championships in Indianapolis in 1987.
A month later, he wrenched his knee and spent three years recuperating. Although he went on to run in two Olympics, that God-given edge, that kick which promised to set him apart, never came back.
"Paul emerged in a golden era for Irish athletics and yes, he was regarded as a very, very good, world class middle distance runner," comments Eamonn Coghlan. "I had huge respect for him on the track. He just had bad luck and it became a `what if' story. I suppose there were certain people in athletics circles who maybe were critical of Paul in his later years when he ran as a rabbit (pacemaker) at European meets, they felt he wasn't making the most of himself." At home, they weren't fazed by Paul's orbit into the big time and on to the small screen. The old man was proud, but wasn't one for making you floaty with praise. As a youngster, Paul would barge in with another bit of gold and his father would inquire if there had been anyone good in the race.
"Or he might say to you, `what does that mean to you?' That was his thing, his constant refrain. Didn't care what we did as long as we were sure about it," says Paul. Nowadays, he is back in Galway, working with the city corporation. How does he regard his American athletics odyssey in retrospect?
"Well, it's funny how things turn out. There is a bit of disappointment there in that I feel I didn't make the most of what I had. Everything else was put on hold while I was committed to running. It was just on the cusp of the big money era, but not quite, so you were professional in all but earnings. I'd love to know what could have been, of course."
Speaking of his father, he reckons that by the time he hit his late teens, they were more good friends than anything. It stayed that way and when he passed away suddenly, without fuss, the whole family was stunned. It seemed out of character.
"Arragh, he'd get sick now and then, but he was just such a strong, wilful kind of man that the abruptness of it shocked us. It is just hard to get used to him not being there."
TO HONOUR that void, the Donovan brothers will fly into Ouarzazate on April 3rd. On the following afternoon, they will kick up a plume of dust as they set out across the bleached wasteland with 500 other pilgrims and they will run.
Nightfall will be broken by chilly stays in Berber tents, where the entrants eat dried food, drink water, tend to mangled toenails, heat-rash, spew blood. They will try to keep themselves together - any competitor who is administered two IV injections by race officials is forced to drop out, is labelled a `quitter'. The brothers may sing and curse and jibe at each other, all the time spurred on in the vicious sun at the thought that their old man might just be privy to it all, elated by their childish, needless discomfort.
"The thing about one of us dropping out is that you just couldn't live with the ribbing. It wouldn't be worth it," laughs Richard.
Paul nods unhappily at the truth of this statement. "Well, I'll tell you. I will not be too proud to walk or crawl across that line. Times mean nothing," he vows solemnly.
They say he might have been a superstar.
