HOW far do you think you could go if you headed west along the famous Costa del Sol footpath from Malaga for a full 24 hours without stopping?
This was the challenge one expat set himself on his 38th birthday – and the monumental distance he covered on Nov 2 ‘mentally changed’ him.
George Nayda, a sedentary real estate advisor more accustomed to sitting in the seat of his Peugeot 3008 car than undertaking Herculean tasks, decided to set off from Malaga city centre at midnight from Muelle Uno.
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On this life-changing enterprise he forwent headphones for music or podcasts – or any other form of entertainment.
For Nayda, it was important to spend his birthday on the coast in silence so he could think about his father who passed away at 38-years-old when Nayda was a teenager.
Averaging just 5,000 steps a day and not playing sports or frequenting the gym, the trek was ‘quite the challenge’ for Nayda, who told the Olive Press that he ‘had no idea what he was in for’.
On November 2, the day he took on the challenge, Nayda walked an astounding 112,299 steps covering 83.15km of the Costa del Sol.
As a real estate advisor, Nayda spends every day driving around the Costa del Sol but wanted to experience the coastline with his ‘own feet and see the towns, beaches and promenades at human speed’.
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Feeling tired with no distractions forced Nayda ‘to stay present’, particularly during the night when ‘everything was quiet, dark, and lonely’.
Just before 7am he witnessed a stunning sunrise at Carvajal Beach, a moment which felt like a turning point for the expat as he processed the challenge that he had chosen to undertake.
Hours before this moment, he began taking micro-naps where his body shut down for ‘one to two seconds’ during his fifteen minute breaks.
It was these brief interludes that helped him regain strength and push through to Marbella and San Pedro where moving after each break became more difficult because his ‘legs had stiffened up’.
During the last couple of hours of his walk he disciplined himself with positive self talk and ended up in El Paraiso at midnight after 24 hours of walking.
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The aftermath was full of contradictions: Nayda experienced ‘uncontrollable shivering’, found it difficult to stand up the next day, and required ‘hot baths to stabilise body temperatures’, but simultaneously he felt that his mind was ‘clearer’ than it had been in years.
Adding to this he claims that he has been ‘mentally changed’ by the challenge and now feels ‘more grounded, more mature and more confident’ than he had beforehand.
‘Life is extremely short and comfort makes us forget what we’re capable of,’ Nayda says.
He had been inspired to complete the task by the David Goggins theory that states when your body feels like it cannot go any further you have actually only reached 40% of your potential, from that point onwards you still have 60% left to give.
He wanted to test his own limits, see where his 40% was and how much further he could push beyond it.
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The real estate advisor has spent the last nine years living in Spain and has previously lived in the Netherlands, Singapore and Ukraine, he calls himself a ‘global citizen.
He hopes that his challenge inspires anyone who is struggling with self doubt to take on a similar feat and see what they are capable of, for him doing so has transformed his life.
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