Trailblazing

Tim arrived home last night from his jungle race experience all in one piece, ready and excited for next year's Genting Trailblazer Run. He and his partner, Mike, came in 22nd out of 55 teams but Tim is convinced he can slice a lot of time off his run now that he knows the difficulty. He also had to stop for Mike, whose soles blew off his shoes!! Shoelaces wrapped around from bottom to top did the trick to hold things together to the finish line.

The run began at the Awana Hotel in Genting on the football field, with some 600 people participating in six categories (Tim and Mike were Mild Men!). And over the next 8 kilometres, the run went through the jungle, up the mountain, across a river, using a swinging vine in some spots. Parts of the run are so narrow Tim and Mike waited in the bottleneck to get through in single file. The end is a man made obstacle course similar to the stuff you'd see at a boot camp. It took the guys 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to the finish line, where everyone was completely covered in mud and sweat.

Tim's only 'injury' is a hand full of thorns - to stop himself at one point, he put out his hand into a thorn bush but couldn't stop to pull them all out. By the end of the race, most thorns were broken off in his hand so he spent time last night with a needle and tweezers trying to get the rest out.

He loved the run, the beautiful hotel, the bag of awesome gifts and the camaradie of the guys so he's already thinking about who he can inspire to take the challenge next year. Pictures aren't up on the website yet so check out this link to see last year's pics - the couple with the green shirts were teachers at Dalat last year.