The Harmony Run team had a good night's sleep last night; thanks to the generous-hearted Shane at Kells Hostel for giving us discounted accommodation.

Our morning's running began in the town of Kells, running past the round tower which has been there for a thousand years. During early medieval Europe, Ireland was known as "the land of saints and scholars" because of its monks who travelled throughout Europe establishing centres of learning. Kells began life as a monastic settlement and indeed, it gives its name to the famous Book of Kells, currently housed in Trinity College, Dublin.

Our first visit was to Our Lady of Mercy School, which happens to be the primary school that Irish Harmony Run coordinator Paula went to. The children were all lined up outside waiting to greet us, and they certainly did that with unbelievable enthusiasm!

We gave our Harmony Run presentation, which the kids loved - they were interested in which country each Harmony Run team member came from. We also performed our juggling skit illustrating the difference between harmony and disharmony, which brought lots of laughter from the audience.

Afterwards we took the torch outside with the children, and there was lots of running and shouts of joy to be heard all around the school.

Today was really a perfect weather day - sunny weather with just a few clouds, hopefully a signal of the summer to come.

We ran the 15km to our next stop, Navan where we were visited St Patrick's Classical School and talked with the first year class.

St. Patrick's has quite a sporting reputation itself; the school is involved in lots of team sports such as Gaelic football, soccer, rugby and basketball. And as you can see, they have talented artists whose drawings where displayed around the school.

And then all that was left was to run to Dublin!

Stefan was influenced by the celtic spirit and practised some flute melodies while waiting for the runner to arrive.

We took the back roads through Ratoath, passing through lovely country roads and spotting many passers-by who gave us very enthusiastic support. One passer-by actually stopped his lorry, came out and held the torch with us. Then were stopped by another passer-by who told us "they are looking for you on the radio!" Apparently someone had rang up the Rick O'Shea Show on 2FM wondering why a lone runner was running through County Meath with a torch. Not realising we ran as a relay, Rick named this runner "The Torch Man" and soon a flood of texts and calls came in with sightings of this elusive "torchman" all over Ireland! But thankfully another caller rang who knew about us and was able to explain to the audience what we were about. It was a very interesting situation, rather similar to one we had with the World Harmony Run on the Gerry Ryan Show two years ago....

By this stage we had reached Dublin and were running through Phoenix Park, Europe's largest city park and a place where many of the Irish WHR team members do their training runs. Towards the end of the day, the sun was blazing away, providing a beautiful welcome to this great city for the runners.

After the day's running, we were treated to a great meal in the Lotus Yoga studio by members of the Irish Harmony Run support team, each of whom cooked and brought along a different meal for the runners to taste. The Harmony Run operates on a purely voluntary basis, and it is this kind of selfless giving we experience from everyone we meet that allows us to keep going.

– Ondrej Vesely

Distance: 76 km

Team Members:
Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Marc Schrader (Germany), Stefan Ehrenfellner (Austria), Jarek Werner (Poland), Evelyn Schmedemann (Germany), Kamila Hozlarova (Czech Republic), Colm Magee (Ireland), Paula Flood (Ireland)

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