SEVENTEEN. Shane Healy lit out across the world. Bumped down in Florida for a year. Couldn't settle. Came home. Couldn't settle. Hit the road again four weeks later. Eighty pounds in his pocket. Hit the road. Didn't settle. Didn't stop.

Snapshots from the crazy years: Homeless shelters. Cadged dinners. Two bit jobs. Wind at his back. Wandering in his heart. Running from things he can't talk about. Running to things he couldn't even see the shape of. Always knew there was something out there, though. Always knew.

The next meal. The next lift. Stood on the roadway for a day and a half in northern Spain once and thought that if the heat didn't kill him the hunger just might.

"I couldn't communicate with the Spaniards. Couldn't get their language. I kept on going `till got to Gibraltar."

Kept on going. Barcelona. Alicante. Madeira. Wandered across the runway of the airport on the rock and into Gibraltar. Slept for weeks in a bomb shelter. Worked long days under a high sun, carrying concrete up and down a hill above a highway. Rented a cheap apartment. Couldn't settle.

"I went down to the pier a couple of days. All those boats coming from the Caribbean, heading for the Caribbean. I knocked on the hull of every boat."

Finally, a Frenchman came up on to the deck of a 60 foot Swan.

"I'm Irish and I'm looking for a job as a deckhand."

"You Irish are all drunks," came the reply.

But communications had opened. The Frenchman never had a chance. They sailed four days later with an Irish deckhand on board. Out to the Canaries. On to Guadaloupe.

Balmy days. Saw a sperm whale. Caught a dolphin fish and ate it half an hour later. Caught a barracuda. Swam in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Did it all.

Kept on moving. A perpetual motion machine. Shane Healy left school at 13. Thought to become a panel beater, like his father before him. He'd grown up in Harold's Cross, in a world of cars and oily fingers. He started an apprenticeship in Percy Lane off Baggott Street. Kicked that. Did some bar work. Had to get moving. Had to swim in the middle of the ocean.

So he worked the boats up and down the Caribbean. Finally, he got paid a bundle of money to drop a boat off in Nova Scotia. He turned his back on the sun and hitchhiked his way across the great flatness of Canada, riding the seam of the trans Canada highway.

More snapshots: Grabbing sleep in parcels of an hour or less, his head resting on worn leatherette amidst the warmth and clatter of a dozen roadside diners. Day and night separated by an increasingly blurry border. He stood for five hours in the cold, minus 35 degrees of cold, in the middle of the night on the side of the road in Saskatchewan. Thought he was going to die, his limbs hardening like freezer meat before ever they experienced the warm thrill of running flat out. Got a lift in a truck and slept the thousand miles of road to Vancouver. Time to get the sun on his back again.

"I flew to Hawaii. Used my last $300 in the world. Flew into Oahu. Broke. I called up the Sheraton courtesy car, walked through the Sheraton out the back and onto the beach. I slept on the straw roof of a shelter on the beach and woke up the next morning with tourists milling all about."

Met some good people. Happened upon an old timer called Jack Brady at the homeless shelter in Oahu. Originally from Cork, Brady worked his life as a fisherman in Maui, the neighbouring island. Jack would get his welfare cheque, look Healy up.

"Come on Irish, we'll go for dinner.

Taxi to dinner. Good food. Living for the day.

"Jack told me to go to Maui, helped me to fly across to Maui. I went there and I thought I'd never see him again. I got a job in the Rusty Harpoon restaurant. He came over once to see me. Scraped the fare together. Coming out of the bank, one day. I heard him. `Hey Irish'. After that, he went and I never saw him again."

You don't run away to an eternity of waitering jobs. No romance in that. Healy gathered his cash, flew to San Francisco, flashed a driving licence and entered the US, as illegally as anyone who has just stepped, gasping and wet, onto the northern bank of the Rio Grande.

The community college system in California costs $50 dollars a term. Good value if you have missed a secondary education. Healy enrolled at Contra Costa. Lived in a VW camper van on campus. Kept himself clean with a morning visit to the college locker rooms.

"I was the only white guy there. It was a bit of a joke. This mad Irishman who lived in the van. The coach, Archie Owens, used to pull my leg about the Irish being good middle distance runners. I'd say yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd never run in my life. One day, out of the blue, he said to me, `I'll give you 50 dollars if you run a mile'.

So there's the shakedown. White kid in the summer sunshine. Tennis shoes and scrawny legs. Running for 50 bucks.

"How many laps is that.

"Four."

"No shit."

Takes off, like the clappers. Dead by lap three. Keeps moving. Runs four minutes, 32 seconds in his first mile. Coach Owens offers to buy him his groceries for the rest of the year if he sticks with it.

Breath is hard to find, but he's curiously exhilarated. Lies flat out, face to the sun, on the other side of the Rubicon.

SOMETIMES he thinks of the Olympic Games. Just a daydream. The 1,500 metres final. Two thirds of the world watching. The camera lingers on the faces of each contestant. Comes to rest on the face of Shane Healy, Ireland.

He thinks of the people who have known him and helped him. People in various nooks of the world seeing the Irish kid up their on the screen. Maybe they gave him a meal, a fare, a ride to some place. There he is on the big screen in the biggest of the big times. People nudging each other in bars. Hey! Hey!

He thinks, too, that maybe his sister Lorraine might see him up there in the crystal bucket. See him and make a connection.

It's been over 20 years since he's seen his sister. As the parts of his life come together, as the wildness seeps out of him, Lorraine is the missing piece.

"I've been everywhere. I've done everything. Notices in the newspaper. Checked the passport office. Maybe it will happen with the Olympics. Maybe if I make it I'll hire a detective.

He shakes his head. Shrugs his shoulders. The relentless waves of positive thinking which churn out of him stop coming for a minute. Too many things he can't talk about. Not now. Too many things he doesn't know and doesn't understand. "Just say that's a story for another day," he says. "That's a story that can't be told `til it's ended."

The story for today and everyday is running. Pounding feet through the parklands around Firhouse, through the slopes that traverse the Sally Gap, a steady investment of miles before the dividend of speed is reaped in the summer.

He is .64 of a second off the Olympic A qualifying mark of 3.38.00 for the 1,500 metres. He has set June 15th as the day he, breaks through that barrier. He knows he can do it. Knows it in his bones. Knows he'll be lining up beside Morceli. Again.

Morceli. The first time Mealy made the state finals for Contra Costa, way back in 1990, Noureddine Morceli ran away with the race. Morceli was running on behalf of Riverdale, a legend disseminated by means of whispers on the community college circuit and nourished by times scorched out across southern California. Morceli ran 3.38 that day. Healy lolloped along at about 4.07. The only two non Americans in the race. They formed a bond.

The following June, Morceli became the world's top miler, rocketing off into another orbit. Healy, meanwhile, moved on to Adam State College, near Boulder, Colorado. Just looked for a middle distance programme, saw Adam State and rang their coach, Joe Vigil.

"Coach, I want to come to your college."

"What do you run for the mile, son?"

"About 4.07, coach."

"Heck, son. We do that in training every day. Six times in quick, succession."

"I'll come anyway. I can't promise you anything."

He sold the camper van and took eight days to hitchhike out to Boulder. Called Joe Vigil from the bowling alley in downtown Alamosa. Vigil didn't respect Healy's times, but Healy's guts took his breath away.

He trained like a lunatic. Pounded the miles out at altitude. One day in the dorm he found himself passing blood. Thought he was going to die again. Learned quick lessons about the body. In eight months he brought his best 1,500 time down from 4.04 to 3.45. Just kept on improving, kept on moving.

And Morceli. In 1992, Healy met Morceli again at the Olympic training centre in Colorado Springs. Good times. Healy used tell people in college that he was good friends with Noureddine Morceli. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

"I met him at the Olympic training centre. He was amazed. He took myself and my friends out to eat. Then I saw him at the Millrose Games in 1992. He always shakes his head every time we meet. He can't believe I'm still running, this scraggy Irish guy he met back in 1990 bringing up the back of the field in Santa Barbara.

"I lined up against him at Crystal Palace two years ago. He was sticker number 10 and I was sticker number 11. I put my leg right up beside his. Our legs are exactly the same size. Me and the greatest distance runner ever. That really pizzazzed me. I came through 1,200 metres in 2.52 that day, I got tripped up by Jim Spivey of the US, got up and ran 3.40.11. I was on for 3.36 easy. That was back in 1994, I know the speed is there."

He saw Morceli last May, in Albuquerque.

"How did you find me?" said Morceli, shaking his head.

"I'll always find you," said Healy. "I'm good at it."

He's getting things sorted now, he thinks. Traces of America are still with him, a patchwork of philosophies cloaking his determined Irish heart.

"Work is a weapon of honour," he says, a couple of times. "Those who lack it shall never triumph.

"I'm getting situated," he says, later. "I haven't been situated for a long time."

Situated and sponsored. Tamangos (where the gang goes), Phillips and Adidas have chipped in. No more situations then like last autumn, when after a summer of hard work at altitude in Denver, he ended up spending the last three weeks living in a homeless shelter again, hosed down with the bums, made attend services in return for food, heading off in his running gear everyday, dismissed as another loon among a houseful of broken down cases.

He made it home. He gathered some money before heading for Australia in search of that Olympic qualifying time. Weakened from his weeks in the homeless shelter, carrying an athlete's vulnerability - anyway, he came down with salmonella, contracted off a bunch of eggs he'd eaten. Passed a couple of weeks rolling on a bunk in a youth hostel, dead with diarrhoea, dizzy, and sick as the Aussie track season unfolded. Came home cured and spent the first Christmas in 10 years with his family.

From the homeless shelter in downtown Denver to the Olympic village in downtown Atlanta will be among the more remarkable stories of this Olympic summer. He needs it to be more than that, however. He still has so much of his potential left to explore.

"I came to this late. I was 19 before I ever ran on a track. The peak is going to be late. Later even than for middle distance runners. I'm determined to run in three Olympics."

Last New Year's day, he ran into Eamon Coghlan at the Phoenix Park two mile race.

Coghlan inquired as to who Shane was training with. Shrug. Nobody. So Coghlan has been giving his time. And Brendan Hackett, the sports psychologist, in Leixlip. And Frank Greally, publisher of Irish Runner and dispenser of sound advice. Good people helping along the road.

He won the Westathletic title for Ireland in Switzerland last summer, running that personal best of 3.38.64. Last autumn, before the Australian debacle, he took the downtown 5K here in Dublin and the Dublin CrossCountry Championship.

The year ahead cant be mapped on any conventional calendar. Time is mapped over a series of tracks and training schedules, target times and race meets. He's lost in the wonder of it all. A new form of travel, a new sense of life on the road.

March 17th, for instance, he runs the Bill Coghlan 5K. Next day, he boards a plane, heads for Boulder, Colorado for six weeks of altitude work. Flies home on May 4th. On May 5th, be runs in the ESB 5K. Good chance to see how much improvement the altitude work has provided.

Through all the talk of being situated and focussed, Healy still radiates a sense of perpetual motion. So much to be resolved. His sister, his family, his future. Just 27. So much left to discover and find. Peaks still ahead.

"Work is a weapon of honour," he says again.

A guy with so much past and so much future, a blurry figure coming off this particular curve in his life. Triumph down the straight ahead. Still moving. Shane Healy.