30.9 miles, 3,000’ gain, 3,900’ loss, 8:25
Mind
Today was lots of rolling hills and more pilgrims. The morning is always the busiest, with large bunches of pilgrims. I used to not see more that 1-2 people at the end of my day. Now I see a lot finishing late in the day like me.
The morning.
Notice anything different in this photo?
No? There’s not a cloud in the sky! Today was the first blue sky, warm-to-hot day. By noon all the morning fog/clouds had burned off. It felt great!
I met a family from Lander, WY. I met two Germans and Dutch woman today. They were the first group I met that walked as fast as I do! As we were talking, they wanted to stop for a break. I wasn’t planning on it, but I joined them. Beer? Sure! Turns out that the two Germans had hiked through Marinthal, the tiny farming village where the Rauenhorst family is from. The Dutch woman’s dentist is a Rauenhorst! Small world! We had fun hiking and laughing and talking. They had done the Camino Privitado along the northern coast of Spain.
Just like Northern California, Eucalyptus trees where imported to this area of spin for the pulp and paper industry. Now they are everywhere. 
I got the last bed at the hostel (second time this has happened).
Body
I ran/walked the last ~10km today after stopping for beer. I was happy! There was a little pain, but manageable. I realized I’ve been doing it all wrong! I should have been drinking afternoon beer every day!
Spirit
A lot of my questions where answered today, which was unexpected. Everyone comes to the Camino looking for answers. Me too.
At breakfast, I read the gospel from the previous day. It was the story that you don’t hide a light under a bushel basket. Of course this triggered the memory of the song from grade school “Hide your light under a basket, oh no! I’m going to let it shine”. Of course I was singing this in my head all morning. I was thinking a lot about our planet and Pope Francis’s call for us to care for our common home. At the first church I stopped at this morning, there was a statue of Mary holding the baby Jesus in one arm and the planet Earth in the other hand (if the ball was not the Earth, let me know!). After leaving the church, it hit me: I should be a light for our common home, Earth. For those of you who know me, this isn’t a big stretch from what I’m doing. But there was something about the clarity of the vision for what I should be doing and the sense of reassurance that I’m on the right path that was very comforting.
Thirty minutes later I was walking through Mileda and I saw a group with the following quote on the back of their shirts:
“The real purpose of running isn’t to win a race, it’s to test the limits of the human heart.”
In hindsight, I should have stopped and asked them about it and what the quote means to them. But to me, it summarized why I ran some of the Camino. It’s about the heart. As I’ve wrote about before, my heart has changed this last year. During one of the pilgrim blessings, the priest talked about how God is love, which comes front the heart. This quotation captures that running for me is about the heart. Yet another ‘answer’ today.
I was able to get to mass today with 40ish other pilgrims.
