I’m going to be honest with you. Training camp was hard. It was probably the hardest ten days of my life. We took showers with a five gallon bucket and measuring cup, ate very strange and foreign food, used porta-potties and brushed our teeth with water bottles.
I don’t write this to make you feel sorry for me or scare away future racers. My goal is to give you insight on what it has looked like for me personally to take up my cross and follow Jesus.
Sleeping arrangements were interesting. We were given (worse case) field scenarios five out of the ten nights of training camp. The other five nights we just slept in our tents or hammocks. I was always grateful for a night in my own tent despite the permanent sweat stains on my sleeping pad. For the sake of leaving some parts of training camp a surprise for future racers, I’ll keep all the different field scenarios a secret.
Most mornings we had workouts at 7am. I didn’t mind these too much except for one day when all I had were my chacos due to a certain field scenario. Running a mile in chacos is not a good idea.. I still have blisters on my feet.
One day, all racers are required to walk 3 miles with their big packs in under 50 minutes.
It wasn’t too bad, but ain’t nobody wanna speed walk 3 miles with a 40lb body bag strapped to your back in the Georgia heat.
Mealtimes were actually so much fun. There were 6 different squads at the same training camp. Every meal, all 300 of us would pack in under this huge dining tent. As you could imagine, things were pretty chaotic. Once announcements were made and instruction given, one person from each table would sprint up to the kitchen to get the food for their table. Each day we had a different theme for meals. Asia day, Africa day, Latin America day, adventure day, etc.. We were instructed on the different cultural rules that we needed to practice at meals to prepare ourselves for each country. I had some AH-MAZING food. I also had some food that I still don’t really know what it was, but I’d be okay with never having it on my plate again.
Training camp is designed to pull you out of your comfort zone in every way possible. Adventures In Missions does a pretty good job at that. As weird and awkward as it is, I’ve learned to love being out of my comfort zone. You cannot grow closer to God when you’re comfortable. So if you’re gonna live a life following Jesus, you’re gonna have to learn to embrace that uncomfortable, weird, awkward life.
Training camp was the perfect place to really grow closer to God, strengthening my reliance and relationship with Him.
It was also perfect for strengthening relationships and growing closer to my squad mates. We really bonded over eating crickets for breakfast one morning, showering out of buckets together, comparing Chaco tan lines, discussing our withdrawals from caffeine and chocolate, comparing how bad we smelled, and much more that’s probably TMI for a public blog(as you can imagine, an all girls squad can lead to some pretty interesting conversations!).
As challenging as training camp was, it was very much needed. I feel so much more prepared and excited for this trip. I feel closer to my squad and closer to Jesus. Now that I’ve had a real shower, the Georgia clay stains are out of my clothes and I finally got some chickfila, I’d do Training Camp all over again in a heartbeat.
