Barefoot walker's extreme travel challenge sparks expert's warning about potential copycats

And his adventure has prompted a fitness professional's warning for others who also might contemplate similar extreme feats involving long-distance walks without shoes.

Eamonn Keaveney, 33, set out from Istanbul in March 2025, beginning a shoe-free trek of 3,400 miles that will end in Ireland, news agency SWNS reported. His route has taken him through the Balkan Mountains, along the Blue Trail in northern Hungary and across the Danube cycle path in Austria.

Keaveney has been on the road for over 300 days, ever since leaving his hometown in Ireland last year. He's currently walking through County Wexford in his home country, heading toward Davidstown, the same outlet said.

The journey has been bringing challenges, including injuries to his feet, weather extremes and an unhappy encounter with a dog that required rabies shots for him afterward.

Long-term barefoot walking leads to several physical adaptations, according to Brayan Cruz, a personal trainer at Crunch Fitness in the New York City area. 

Cruz said this challenges the common assumption that barefoot walking reduces sensation.

"A multi-thousand-mile barefoot journey is appropriate only for a small, highly conditioned population with years of progressive adaptation and strong injury management strategies," Cruz added. 

For most people, research supports limited, controlled barefoot exposure as a supplemental training tool rather than an endurance goal, according to the trainer. 

Keaveney has a history of extreme endurance challenges.

Two years later, he climbed 10 mountains in 10 days, again without shoes. 

The idea of the barefoot walks began years earlier during Keaveney's unexpected encounter with a record book.

"Many years ago, I was in a bookstore sheltering from the rain when I saw the Guinness World Records book and decided to have a look," he told SWNS.

"I spotted the record for the longest barefoot journey, and I thought, 'I could beat that.'"

Ever since his initial journey in 2016, he's wanted to go on an even bigger walk, he said. The logical next step after walking around a country? Walking across a continent.

"A couple of years ago it struck me that if I walked from Istanbul to Ireland, I'd have walked the length of Europe."

Early on, in Turkey, Keaveney was bitten on the backside by a dog and had to get vaccines for rabies.

"In general, I'm very lucky to have basically spent the entire last year outdoors." 

"In every country I've gone through, I've had numerous offers of water, food and even shoes," he said.

Currently, Guinness World Records lists the official longest barefoot journey at 3,409.75 kilometers (around 2,118 miles) by Paweł Durakiewicz in January 2024. Keaveney has reportedly exceeded that by now. 

Anton Nootenboom, a Dutch veteran, surpassed Durakiewicz's distance during a barefoot walk across the U.S., according to some media outlets. Nootenboom posted online about a 2,169 mile-long trek from Los Angeles to New York.

Musician Mike Posner walked 2,851 miles from New Jersey to California in 2019. He apparently plans to make another long trek while hiking the Continental Divide Trail, which is roughly 3,100 miles.

"I started out searching for myself and my country," Jenkins wrote, "and found both."