A Dutch man who walked barefoot from Los Angeles to Times Square to raise awareness of men’s mental health and set a Guinness World Record completed his 260-day journey on Saturday.
Anton Nootenboom, an Army veteran, said the first thing he would do after walking 3,100 miles over eight and a half months was put on a pair of shoes and socks.
“He’ll be there, at the finish line,” Nootenboom, 37, told The Post Monday from Staten Island.
“I almost forgot what it was like.”
To set the world record, he was not allowed to wear anything while running, not even a Band-Aid.
He could have worn socks and shoes while he rested, but decided not to – so the last time he had anything touch his feet other than asphalt and concrete was February 17, the day he began his infamous trek.
Nootenboom, known as “The Barefoot Dutchman” with 1.3 million people following his journey through his Facebook, Instagram and TikTok pages, said the expedition was very difficult.
“They have gone through the desert and the snow. There must have been small pieces of broken glass. When the tire of the car broke, there was a metal pin, so I had to pull it very hard from my leg,” he said.
“The first month or so was the most interesting because my skin was still soft … then you have concrete on the road, so it’s like sandpaper. And little stones will just go into the wound.
Her boyfriend and dog accompanied her in the camper van.
“Where we sleep every night is really surprising. We don’t know where we will end up. In the bigger cities, the Walmart parking lot – they have toilets,” he said.
“But in the west, it’s supposed to be lonely. So it’s just camping in the middle of nowhere, living off canned food. We sleep in a lot of national forests.
Sometimes, he stayed overnight at the hotel to shower — and other guests were shocked by Nootenboom’s lack of footwear and “looked at me like I was from Mars or something,” he said.
The good Samaritans we meet on the street also offer us houses to marry.
“We’d meet him at the dog park or the coffee shop, wherever. And we’d start talking about what we were doing and he’d just invite us to stay at his house,” he said.
Nootenboom, who served in the Dutch Army for 10 years and did three tours in Afghanistan, timed the final cruise to coincide with Movember, an annual fundraising campaign for men’s health, and has raised more than $40,000 so far.
When he left the Army, he sold all his possessions and decided to travel, which eventually affected his mental health, and in 2018, he fell into a deep depression.
“It was heartbreak, financial pressure, not having the right job… I ended up back in the hostel… I was in a bunk bed, in my early 30s, realizing that I was full of my own identity,” he explained.
“For 10 years, all I had to do was pretend to be a bush. I had a driven goal in the Army … and now I have no direction.
Nootenboom was living near the coast of Sydney, Australia when he started walking barefoot, which he says is common there, to keep his mind busy.
He quickly discovered that running without shoes or socks helped his psyche.
“I always thought it was a lot of hippie stuff. But then I started to feel that the charge of the earth, it holds a certain energy, and we must be walking barefoot, so we can get that energy,” he said. “You start making happy chemicals if your feet touch the earth.”
The persona of “The Barefoot Dutchman” was born in 2019, after he went to the base camp of Mount Everest barefoot, a feat that had never been done before.
He has set the record for the longest barefoot walk in 2021, when he walked approximately 1,900 miles from Cairns to Sydney. In January, the Pole, Pawel Durakiewicz, broke the record, and Nootenboom came close to him.
“I sent a message like, ‘I’m sorry, man, but I’m going to do almost double that,'” he said.
Nootenboom said he plans to complete another world record.
“I will never do anything like this again, let me tell you,” he said.
“There are world records that can be achieved in a day or two.”
