This past weekend I was fortunate enough to complete perhaps one of the most beautiful walks I have ever done in my life. Located about an hour and a half from Dublin, the settlement of Glendalough, Ireland, is a site that you would have never had guessed was there. The trail that the group I was with took was the White Trail–Spinc and Glenealo Valley. This lead us from the Lower Lake and around the Upper Lake in the Wicklow National Park, but in order to get to the views, you have to take quite a hike. The White Trail is one of the most challenging there. If you ever get a chance to go to Dublin, you really need to take a day and spend it in Wicklow.

The walk was great, but while we were on our way up, something scary happened: one of the girls in our group fainted. She was unconscious for over a minute and would not respond to us; not even a hand squeeze. We knew that she had not been feeling well and I stayed behind with her while the other two walked at their pace (which was not too much faster). We stopped whenever she wanted to, but apparently she had been pushing herself too hard. When I stopped to take a picture of something, she walked ahead and all of a sudden I heard the sound of someone falling into the bushes. Luckily she fell there and not on rocks or in the mud.

What this brings me to is to emphasize how important it is to be prepared when you exercise. We had made stops to take a drink because we could tell that she needed to stop, but we should have made more. Every time we stopped we offered a banana or an apple or something so that she could get some sugar in her, but she refused and said that she would get a stomachache. It does not help that she has a really sensitive stomach.

In the end, she had not had enough food to eat that day and we finally got her to eat an apple and biscuits after she fainted.

Please be prepared when you exercise. Drink water, eat plenty of food so that you have energy, and know what you are getting yourself into. Don’t test your body’s limits. Stop when you need to. Don’t push yourself to the point where you’re hurting yourself.