When I turned 50, I read an article in a sports magazine suggesting that milestone birthdays should be marked by doing something physically challenging that you’ve never done before. The idea stuck with me.

I called my son.

“How about we run a half marathon together?”

That may not sound ambitious from someone who had been running since age 16. But while I loved running, my preferred race distance had always been ten miles. A half marathon was just far enough outside my comfort zone to feel like a worthy challenge.

I was living in London at the time, and my son was in Dallas. Over the next several months we trained together from opposite sides of the Atlantic, comparing notes, sharing progress, and encouraging one another. I also told my colleagues about my goal, and that accountability turned out to be one of the most important parts of the process. We were traveling extensively for work then, and everyone knew I was training. Declining late-night drinks after dinner was easy when people understood why. Some colleagues even rearranged schedules so I could get a training run in before our workday began. They even messaged me the day of the race to see how I did.

My son and I set a specific goal: run the Barcelona Half Marathon in exactly two hours. And that’s exactly what we did.

Afterward, my son pointed out that we probably could have run faster. Maybe we could have. But our objective wasn’t to see how fast we could go. It was to run a two-hour half marathon. We set the goal, built the plan, followed the training, and achieved the result. There was no reason to be disappointed.

That was one of the most important lessons from the experience: celebrate success as defined by your original vision, not by moving the finish line after you’ve crossed it.

An Eight-Year Goal

As I moved through my fifties, another goal began taking shape. For years I had wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago. While living in the UK, I briefly considered doing it when my job ended, but visa requirements and the need for healthcare in the US made the timing impossible. Instead of abandoning the dream, I postponed it.

In 2018, I decided that walking the Camino would be my challenge for my 60th year.

Setting a goal eight years out means you have no idea whether circumstances will cooperate. You don’t know where you’ll be living, what your career will look like, or what your health will be. All you have is a vision. Sometimes that’s enough.

Faith often begins with a vision before there is any visible path to achieve it.

When the Dream Got Specific

By 2023, I was living near Philadelphia and had joined a hiking group. On one hike I met a woman from Spain, and we got to talking about my interest in the Camino and my love of hiking. By then I had explored twelve U.S. National Parks and spent countless weekends in the woods and mountains. After hearing about that, she said, “You should do the Primitivo.”

The Camino Primitivo is the original Camino route and one of the most physically demanding, about 193 miles (311 km) through the mountains of northern Spain by the official count. My watch, and those of several pilgrims I met, came in higher. One Brit told me his read 320 km, and my tour company’s daily distances ran about a mile long. Add a few detours of my own, and I finished with over 210 miles.

I made my decision almost immediately. That was the route. Until then the Camino had been something I wanted to do someday. Now it was something I would do.

Faith Requires Planning

As my 60th birthday approached, it was obvious the dream wasn’t going to happen by accident. I began researching the route itself, reading guidebooks, joining Facebook groups, and getting involved with American Pilgrims on the Camino. About six months before departure, I booked flights, which is no small task when you live in Erie, Pennsylvania, and your closest major airports are hours away.

I also didn’t want to spend my pilgrimage worrying about accommodation reservations, whether to transfer luggage or carry everything on my back, or whether I’d find a bed in a crowded albergue. I wanted to focus on walking. So, I hired a travel company, made my deposit, and removed those distractions.

Planning is not the opposite of faith. If we truly believe a goal matters, we prepare for it.

Training for Something I’d Never Done

Walking about 193 miles over fourteen days isn’t something you casually decide to do. Around that time, I was experimenting with AI tools, and I asked Claude to build a detailed training plan around my constraints:

• Three days of running each week
• Two days of Peloton cycling
• Long hikes on Saturdays
• One rest day
• Strength training throughout
• No excessively long weekday runs because, frankly, I still needed to show up for work

I even asked for a meal plan. Training began fourteen weeks before departure, and just like the half marathon, it gradually took over much of my free time.

I wanted spiritual preparation too, not just physical. I asked Claude for daily intentions based on the Psalms, tailored to each stage of the journey, so every day had a verse and a focus, and a reminder that this was more than a hiking challenge.

I still wondered whether all that preparation would be enough. Faith doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. It gives us the courage to move forward anyway.

Losing My Phone in the Mountains

The Camino began with a sixteen-mile day, with no easing in. A few days later, on the Hospitales route, I reached for my phone to check the map. It wasn’t in its pouch.

My first reaction was shock. It had to be there. I pressed the phone button on my Apple Watch to make it ping, and the watch came back with a message I can still see: phone not in range.

I stood there deciding whether to backtrack and look for it. It took about a moment to know the answer. It was somewhere back in the brush, and I was never going to find it. I knew roughly where my destination for that night was and the location of my hotel, so I kept walking. I told myself I’d get a new one and write the whole thing off as a rough day.

I reached the hotel that night after more than 24 miles, or at least that’s what my watch recorded before it died. I was out of water and completely wiped out. I knew I had to eat, but when the food came, I just picked at it.

The real cost of the phone showed up later. There was no way to replace an iPhone on the trail, and buying one in Spain would have meant a Spanish number. What saved me was my work phone, which was in my suitcase only because I’d had a couple of calls on my travel day. It’s an Android, so not much use, but with permission I could run the one Camino app and WhatsApp. I had already saved my daughter’s and oldest sister’s numbers in it, so I wrote to both: I’m okay. I lost my phone. My daughter contacted the tour operator, who called me the next day.

Then something surprised me. I didn’t miss it.

The only real sting was the photos. I hadn’t turned on cloud backup, so everything I’d taken so far was gone, including my picture at the Yoda bench, one of the most famous stops on the route. The mountains were spectacular, and I have no pictures of them.

Walking in Thirds

The Primitivo isn’t the most popular Camino route, and I walked alone for much of it. I met pilgrims from Spain, The Netherlands, Poland, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other places. We often stayed in the same towns and ate in the same restaurants, but during the day everyone moved at their own pace. I found it relatively easy to be alone with my thoughts, and I mentally divided each day into thirds.

The first third was the warm-up. I ran through the simple prayers I use when I run, which help me regulate my breathing, and then settled into the psalm for the day. I checked the app often to make sure I was still on the trail, and I tried hard to notice where I was. My watch was set to hiking mode and called out every mile, so on the longer days I ignored it until I was near the end of the stage. I didn’t want to spend the day counting down.

The second third was the workout. I tried not to listen to the watch, and some days I got so absorbed in my thoughts or the scenery that I realized I had gone a couple of miles without registering the distance.

The last third was the “are we there yet” stage. I tried to hold out until the final 5K before paying attention, but the fatigue always caught up with me, and I wanted to be done.

The quiet suited me. One day a young couple passed with music playing out loud, and I found it so jarring that I let them go ahead so I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t know it yet, but that was a preview of Melide.

When the Camino Francés joined the Primitivo, the quiet was gone. After eleven days of mostly walking alone, the trail was crowded, and there was no letting the noise pass me. Ironically, that last stretch was spiritually harder than many of the mountain sections.

The Last Day

The plan for the last day was simple and left no room for error. I wanted to be at the noon Mass, and I needed to drop my pack first. That meant reaching Santiago by 11:00, which meant leaving by 7:00 and holding a 20-minute mile for twelve miles, with no rest stops.

I’d had a late Spanish-style dinner and didn’t get to bed on time, so I wasn’t thrilled about the early start. I also forgot my headlamp. Sunrise wasn’t until 8:00, so for the first couple of miles I followed other pilgrims’ lights until I could see the trail myself.

The path wasn’t difficult, just some easy ups and downs and mostly pavement. The hard part was the pace. Every mile I wondered if I could actually keep this up. When my watch called out 18 or 19 minutes, I smiled, because I’d earned a little time. When it squawked 22, I groaned and sped up. I still needed two stamps for my Compostela, so I watched for places with short lines and found a church and a cafe. Stamp, then back on the road. Even stopping to pee felt like a loss, which is where my She Wee earned its keep. I could be discreet and skip the trudge off the path.

I was torn between wanting to get there on time and knowing this was the last day.

The Cathedral

I reached Santiago around 11:15, dropped my pack, and joined the queue. This was supposed to be the quieter Mass, but every seat was taken, and there were tour groups in matching t-shirts filling most of the pews. I sat at the base of a pillar for the first part, then stood behind the last pew so I could see. That made an hour on my feet after twelve miles.

I don’t speak Spanish, so I understood very little. I had decided to take communion, since other pilgrims had told me all Christians were welcome. During communion, one of the sisters sang “I Am the Bread of Life.” That hymn always makes me cry, and even in Spanish it did.

I went through a lot of emotions in that hour. I was amazed that I’d actually done it and sad that it was over. I also had a small urge to announce, out loud, that I had just walked one of the toughest Caminos there is.

Closing

For eight years, this walk was in my future. Now it’s in my past.

At 50, I ran a half marathon with my son and learned the value of a goal and a plan. At 60, I walked over 210 miles across northern Spain and learned you can prepare for everything and still lose your phone in the mountains. Trusting my body and handing everything else over to God was part of the faith necessary to keep going even when faced with obstacles.I came home with a few scratches, one small blister, and some very tight muscles, and I’m grateful for all of it: for a body that could still carry me over mountains, for the people who cheered me on, and for a God who lets some of the best journeys begin years before the first step.