Trailwalker Update 2

When I woke up this morning, my entire body hurt. I rolled over and looked at my alarm, and it really was time to get up, just 6 hours after going to bed. I begrudgingly rolled over, swung my feet over the side of the bed and got up.

I know what you’re thinking. Why were you so sore? Isn’t 6 hours more than enough sleep for someone your age? What’s so special about this? The answer: yesterday was my longest day of training yet for the Trailwalker (which is a fundraiser for Oxfam). Starting around 11 AM, I hiked about 45 km (slightly longer than a marathon) over the next 13 hours. We did almost the entire second half of the trail which we will be hiking for the Trailwalker. Because the rest of my Trailwalker group is out of Hong Kong for the weekend, I went with a couple other guys from my church. We went slightly slower than my normal training pace, but it was a good day for building endurance and learning certain preparation tips which I would never have realized I needed to know on the shorter training hikes we’ve done so far. After the hike, it took a couple hours to get home (a long bus ride, a short walk, and a stop at McDonalds), and after a long shower, I went to bed around 2:30. While 6 hours of sleep is normally enough for me, it falls desperately short of being adequate when my body is trying to recover from a 45 km hike. Tomorrow (my day off) will be a beautiful day.

In the rest of my life, things are going well. Last week, I read the book Radical by David Platt. It is a book I highly recommend about taking Jesus words as Jesus’ words and obeying them because He said them rather than trying to analyze the reasons why they shouldn’t apply to us. It hurt at points (notice the “s” on the end of the word “point”) because of how close to home a lot of what he was saying hit, but it was an incredible read and a great challenge to take my faith seriously.