Recap

So here I am back in Colorado, after my weekend of walking marathon (literally) lengths in LA. It was a really great weekend. This is going to be quite a long e-mail.
There were four of us who walked together, my mom, her friend Charlene, her friend Denise, and myself. Charlene, I found out, is a breast cancer survivor, as was her mother. Her mom had breast cancer, survived, and lived until last year to the ripe old age of 101. We discovered toward the end of it too that Denise has melanoma. So out of the four of us, three went/are going through cancer, and hopefully what I did will help my generation and the younger ones to prevent getting cancer.
My mom picked me up from the airport and we headed to the hotel in Long Beach. This was where the Event Eve was, which was our check in. We started seeing all these crazy and fun signs, shirts and buttons. This whole weekend was all about boobs, and it was as politically incorrect as you could get away with for one weekend. It was great.
Personally, I got two pins, one that said "Save 2nd Base" and one that said "Save the Jugs" and has a moonshine bottle on it (I gave that one to Zach). We saw everything you can think of, and I have a lot of pictures of some of the stuff.
There were slogans "Squeeze 'em for a Reason", "Get your mammies grammed", "Healthy Hooters", "Bumps Ahead", etc. We spent a better part of the weekend trying to come up with our own names. Charlene and Denise came down with Charlene's husband Chuck and my dad. We all went out to a yummy Italian dinner before settling in to get a good night's sleep before our very early morning on Saturday.

Saturday we had to be up at 5 a.m. to try to get over to the opening ceremony, where we got breakfast and had someone lead us through some stretches, and heard some inspirational speeches.
One was a lady who did the Avon Walk last year for her sister, and within the past year had been diagnosed herself with breast cancer. She had surgery on Tuesday, but was still going to walk whatever she was able to do.
There were 2100 of us doing this walk and we had raised over $5 million.


We walked through some really nice areas, including about 6 miles along the beach, and then through marinas and everything. It was a nice change for a land-locked girl like me. After lunch we started moving more inland. We got to 13 miles, the halfway point. This was an option for some people who were only doing a half-marathon each day. We decided to keep on going. Which we did. It was a long day full of walking, but we made it through somehow. There were two options, one of camping out at Wellness Village (which is the name of the end of the first day) and the other of staying at the hotel. My mom's vocabulary doesn't have camping in it, so the hotel it was, which was a great idea because there was a hot tub. That felt so good after walking all day. We went out to dinner that night and passed out super early.
Sunday morning we didn't have to wake up as early, but we still had to deal with getting over to the starting point. We get outside and of course we're about 150 deep in a line to get over there, and the busses weren't even there. They were sending two busses over to pick us up, but we weren't going to be within those two busses. We ended up having to take a cab over, because the starting time was 7:30 to 8:00 and they were closing the course at 8:00. We wouldn't have even been able to make it to the starting point if we had waited for the bus. I feel bad for the other people who were waiting around, I don't know what happened to them. (The transportation was the only negative part about the weekend, everything else was incredbily well-organized).
Sunday everyone was walking a little slower. We were all doing what I called "the blister shuffle". Personally, the bottom of my left foot was pretty much one giant blister, but with a thorough coating of moleskin I was able to make it through. Sunday actually wasn't that difficult, until around mile 8 or 9 and then everything just kicked in. All we wanted to do was make it to the finish line. Needless to say, that last mile was so energizing! It was pure adrenaline that we were running (or rather walking) on by that time. We got to the finish line and my dad and Chuck were there to greet us. We didn't stick around too long, we finished about an hour before the closing ceremonies started. I was fortunate enough to have brought my flip flops and changed into them as soon as I possibly could. I also signed up for next year, to do the Rocky Mountains one. Someone I had talked to during the walk said that they signed up for crew, so that they didn't have to worry about doing the fund raising. So that's exactly what I signed up to do. So I am going to crew the Rocky Mountain Avon Walk in 2009. I do have the option of being a walker if I change my mind. As much as I would love to do the actual walk again, I just don't want to have to worry about raising all that money all over again especially in this economy. But the following year I'll be a walker again. I like the alternating theory.
It was a really inspirational and emotional weekend. There were these people who were cheering us along the entire time, following the route, playing music for us and cheering us along. We had our unofficial mascot, which was a Golden Retriever whose mom was doing the walk and we are all dog people, so we always stopped to pet her anytime we walked by her. Also there was the motorcycle crew, which were Harley Davidson guys who were there for us at all major intersections, helping us get through the traffic.
Everyone this weekend was really amazing to be out there doing whatever they were doing, be it walking, crewing, volunteerings, or cheering. While I could barely walk Sunday afternoon, it was definitely worthwhile and I should be able to start walking the dogs again as soon as tomorrow. However, I was thinking ahead of time and did remember to schedule a massage for today :)


Here is a link to the photos I took, hopefully I will be adding the ones Charlene took soon. Avon Walk Photos
or cut and paste: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbNmbRo3csmTjQ

Final Week

This is the final countdown. There are four of us that are going to be walking together, my mom, her friend Charlene, her friend Denise, and myself.
Friday I fly into Burbank Airport and my mom picks me up, and we go straight down to Long Beach to check in for the Event Eve. My dad and Chuck (Charlene's husband) are coming down and all six of us are having dinner together. Then it's off to a very early sleep, because we have to be at the starting line, at the Queen Mary, at either 6:30 or 7. I don't remember which one, but at that early in the morning, there isn't much of a difference. We have to keep a 3.2 mile per hour pace in order to be able to walk the entire course in time, which includes breaks and lunches. I know that I will be bringing my Camelbak, because while there are water stops every 2 or 3 miles, I think it will be best to have it in between stops. We arrive at the Wellness Village sometime before 7 pm, where they will shuttle us back to the hotel (my mom's version of "roughing it") and we will promptly pass out. Assuming we wake up on Sunday morning, I believe we have about a 7:30 am start, to finish off by 3:00 pm. The closing ceremony is back at the Queen Mary, from 3:00 to 3:30, and then we will head on back to my parents' house.
I am quite glad that I decided to fly back on Monday, rather than Sunday night. I am also very glad that I decided to change my seat to one where there would be a partition in front of me, rather than a cramped seat. If I am able to move on Monday, I will still probably want all the room I can in order to stretch out. I get back in to Denver on Monday night, and the event will be over.
While the event will only be one weekend, I know that the memories will last a lifetime. I am bringing my camera with me, and am planning on taking many pictures during the event, which I will post on here.
I probably won't be able to post on here during the event, since I am not bringing my laptop with me, but I will write about it as soon as I get a chance.

10 days!

Obviously I have been very bad about keeping this updated, but August was also a ridiculousy busy month for me.
So now I have ten days left until I leave for LA and check in for the Event Eve. Unfortunately my training hasn't been all that I would have liked it to be. I have been working long and late hours, which doens't give me a lot of time during the day or after work. It's not much of an excuse because I know I should make time for it. On the bright side, when I was in LA about a month ago, my mom and I did go on a 4 mile, 1 hour walk, and there were no problems there. It was very humid though, something I am definitely not used to out here in Colorado! But, in less than two weeks, I will be back there again, and geared up to walk 39.3 miles in two days!
As of right now I am actually 99% towards my goal! I surpassed the Avon Walk goal of $1800, and had set my own goal to be $2500. As of this morning I am at $2400+. That makes me excited, and I know people have said they have some more coming to me.

I am just really excited about this whole weekend an am very grateful for all of the help I have had in getting out there!

End of July

July has come and is nearly gone. It has been a really hectic month as far as jobs was concerned, at the beginning of the month I went from two jobs to one job full time. I also have had a lot of planning to do, between my trip to LA next week and graduate school. But everything is settled now, I took my GRE test yesterday (it's like the SAT for grad school). I leave for LA on Sunday and will be there for a week for Steph's wedding. That means getting my bridesmaid dress squared away (which I picked up, fully altered, yesterday), the dogs boarded, and all of our travel arrangements. I leave on Sunday, Zach gets in on Friday, and we both leave the following Sunday. We're getting a rental car to get around LA, and my friend Lauren will be staying with me during the week, which will be lots of fun.
I also want to thank EM and Callie, who have helped me out in my fundraising by forwarding my email to their email lists and have gotten me donations as a result. At this point I have over $2110. I do still really want to get to my personal goal of $2500, but at this point I have surpassed Avon's minimum of $1800 so I am all set for the walk. I just need to get my training shoes on, and keep up the walking, although I know next week in LA I will be able to go walking with my mom, which will be really fun.

Update

Sorry I've been really bad about keeping this updated. There has been a lot going on in my life lately. For a while there, I was working two jobs, one at the restaurant, and one at the copy center. Well, over 4th of July weekend I received a phone call saying that the restaurant was not opening back up. So, I took on the copy center full time. That transition has led me to working a whole variety of hours, so I don't really feel like I had the same routine that I had before. I am also studying for the GRE, which I am going to take on July 29th; I wanted to get it out of the way before I went to LA in August, and then I will work on the application process between the August wedding and the September wedding. Things have been busy, and I haven't been able to concentrate on the training for this as much as I had wanted to. Plus, we aren't really getting summer nights here...it's still hot at night. It's made sleeping difficult, and I am even sleeping under an open window with the ceiling fan going full blast. I haven't had as much energy as I would have liked. I think this means I will get back to going to the gym after work. If nothing else, it's air conditioned. I just don't feel right taking the dogs out for long walks in this heat. I do plan on waking up early on Thursday morning and taking Skylar for a hike, that will be fun. Not sure where yet though.

Currently I have raised $1250 so far. I am only $550 away from the limit set by Avon, and I am half way to my goal. I have contacted a few more people, but really most of my fundraising attempts have been put on the back burner for now. I am hoping my trip to LA will help out with donations.

Week 4 continued

I'm playing with that map thing some more. Here's today's walk.

Definitely shorter, because it is still warm and a little bit of a later starting time. And I know this is full of trees!

Week 4

I'm happy to say that my fundraising is doing quite well, although nowhere near as well as my mom's... she got her $1800 within 2 hours of sending out her request letter! But on the bright side I did get a large donation from my dad, and a couple of donations from friends. It is great seeing the people out there who are supporting me! I did have one huge surprise as a donation. When I sent out my e-mail, I also sent it to my manager at the restaurant, who then passed it on to her e-mail list. When I came in to work on Saturday, Callie, my manager, gave me a check for $200 from her grandmother! I thought that was so sweet, her granny in Texas was contributing for someone she didn't even know. I think that is what makes this such a special experience.

The training is also getting better, even though I have two very tired puppies right now. It's hard because I get home from work late, so I can't take them out at night, and since I get home late I don't exactly wake up early. So today we went for an hour long walk, but it was from 10:30 to 11:30. Needless to say, it was really hot! Especially for Atka, since he has black fur. Hopefully it will help him shed some of his excess weight too. Tonight I have my class, so I get back around 9 pm, which means I should be able to take them out for another walk then, when it is dusk and much much much cooler. I have no idea what the temperature is now, but there definitely weren't as many trees as I had been expecting. I modified my old running route (when I was training for Bolder Boulder) and instead of going to the end of the creek path and back, I made a triangle, which I assume added some more distance to it. All in all, we walked 2.77 miles in an hour. I actually found this really cool thing online where you can map your routes, so I am going to try to include that in here, hopefully it will work out.

It looks like it was successful. Hopefully it works for other people to look at too. But this is a really cool website I found called http://www.mapmyrun.com which is really nice because I still haven't found my pedometer since I moved so I really have no concept of the distance I am going. I am planning longer walks too, but I'll have to be better about going earlier in the day, especially if I plan on taking the dogs with me. I know Atka is a little bit tougher since his is a big black dog and slightly overweight, so the heat really affects him. But I thought since Skylar is a bundle of energy she wouldn't be affected as much. I was wrong.

Well, that is my update for now. I will try working with that site more, so that way I can really calculate my training accurately.

Week 3

Last week I was struck down by the stomach flu. Or tomato salmonella. Or bad Pizza Hut. Those are pretty much the three options I'm looking at, because by the time I got home from work on Monday night I felt so horrible that I couldn't really do anything again until Thursday. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I did call in sick to work on Tuesday night, and I was starting to feel a little bit better, so I went out with Zach and his family to celebrate Father's Day. That might not have been a great idea, and Wednesday I was still out of commission and called in sick. Thursday night I had my class and was feeling better by then, plus I only had to sit down, I didn't have to move, so it was ok. By the time Friday rolled around I was up and ready to get back to work. Perfect timing, I suppose.

Needless to say I didn't get as much out of last week as I had hoped. I have talked to a friend from work and we are going to start hiking together, because hiking is pretty much like extreme walking. I'd probably have to leave Atka at home because he's big and strong and can be a bully.

This is also starting to get to a difficult time of the year because of the temperature. Summer hits the Front Range pretty hard and since I work at night I can't go out late in the afternoon. I have to start just bearing the heat and not using it as an excuse although it might be an excuse for the dogs.

Yesterday I did work during the day, and then went to yoga afterwards. It's nice, I just wish I would be able to have more time to take classes, but making two trips a day into Boulder just isn't practical. I guess I just need to improvise at home or something, for when I can't make it to the gym during the day.

My fundraising is still at $500. Last week fell kind of short since I was sick. My manager at Nine75 has helped me out with a lot of ideas for fundraising, so hopefully they will come through. I would just rather raise my money through people I know, but it is all for the same cause, so I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end if I know them or not. I also have to start talking to people about it.

On a sad note, I discovered another reason for doing this walk. One of my mom's friends, Laura Holdridge, just died after battling breast cancer for 3 years. Her son and my brother were friends, and the two families became close friends. So this is really saddening, but just another reason why this is so important.

Week 2

Well, the past week has been fairly uneventful, as far as any training and whatnot would go, because I have spent the better part of the past week and a half sick in some way or another. Right now I have some weird stomach thing that started on Monday, and I haven't really been able to eat much or keep anything down for that matter. I wasn't feeling well last night so I didn't work, and tonight I just didn't feel strong enough to go to work. Waiting tables takes a lot of work, and I don't have the strength for t right now, I would rather be able to rest until this weekend when working will pay off more.

I have raised $50 more this week, bringing me to a total of $500. That is great because that means I am now 1/5 of the way to my $2500 mark. But also because I haven't been feeling well, that has kind of put a damper on my attempt at fundraising. So far I have fliers up in the employee areas at both of my jobs, and I am still waiting on the business cards (which I wasn't able to pick up last night since I didn't go to work). I have to come up with other ideas, and continue my e-mail campaign probably on a monthly basis until it gets closer. I know a lot of people said that they would donate, they just couldn't right now. I think seeing a lot of people in August when I am home for a week will also help out.

Update for those who donated

I received all of my information in the mail today, including my t-shirt for the Avon Walk. To show how much I appreciate the love and support from all the people who donate to me, I will write the names of all of my donors on the shirt, which I will very proudly wear during the walk! I have a light pink and a hot pink Sharpie marker, which I am alternating names, and if you are a survivor, you get a ribbon next to your name! As I receive more donations, I will take pictures of all the names and post them on here.

Week 1

This week has been fairly uneventful, I haven't done much more than walk the dogs about 1/2 hour each day. The whole working 6 days a week thing is really getting to me, I'm trying to find something full time closer to home, so I can regulate my schedule a bit more, and then spend my days off being able to do stuff around the house AND train. I also took last week off as a reward to myself for running the Bolder Boulder at the beginning of the week. There is something weird going on in my right knee, and I don't really want to do anything that might happen to stress it more than working two jobs where I'm constantly on my feet. Right now taking Advil as needed has been just fine, if it keeps up much longer though, I will probably get it checked out. Right now I think I just tweaked a muscle last Monday and want to give it some time to rest.
So far I have managed to raise $450! I know I still have a long way to go until I get to $2500, but I'm on the right path. I also still have over three months to get to my goal, so I have no doubts that I will raise what is needed, if not more! I have also created business cards so that I can hand them out to people with all of the information for donating money for the walk in my name, because you never know when you're going to come across someone who is interested. That is an advantage of working in the copy center at Office Depot, and it will all be paid for out of a gift card, which is an added perk. So hopefully that will also get the word out, and it's something that can be passed along quite easily.

The Beginning

One year ago, I never thought I would be where I am today. There were a series of misfortunes. Time has come and gone, I moved to another state and moved back. When I knew I was moving back to Colorado, I knew there was one thing I had to do: sign up for the Bolder Boulder. This is a 10K that takes place on Memorial Day weekend. It is one of the largest timed races in the country. I participated in it in 2005 also. But I knew I would get back on track if I signed up for it. And I did. And on Monday I completed it in 78 minutes, walking uphills, but jogging the rest. My knees are still mad at me for what I did to them in high school with my jumping events in track.
About a month ago, my mom mentioned she was doing the 2-day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I thought that was really cool, but didn't think much more about it than that. Then, all of a sudden, last week it dawned on me. If my mom, who is XX years old (I'll refrain from saying her age, but I will say she's more than 30 years older than I am) can do this amazing feat, a two day walk where she will walk 36.3 miles during that time, then why can't I? I'm young enough that it shouldn't be a problem at all.
My mom is a cancer survivor. Not breast cancer, but colon cancer. She was diagnosed with it in 2003, and then underwent chemo for quite some time. It was hard being in Colorado and her being in California, but she wanted me to continue living my life, continuing my schooling.
A couple years ago, my aunt Debbie was diagnosed with breast cancer. This brought her and my mom very close, as my mom had just gone through the whole process of chemo a couple years before and was able to be there with her through her chemo as a support. She is a survivor, and when I saw her at Christmas last year, which was the first time I'd seen her since her bout with cancer, she looked phenomenal.
Another aunt, Cari, also is a survivor of melanoma.
One of my best friends from high school just finished chemo treatment, not for cancer, but for Langerhan's cell histiocytosis (LCH). Not a lot is known about this disease, but chemo is a treatment for it. She went through just fine and is getting married this fall.
These are some of the closest experiences with cancer I have experienced; at least those who have lived to tell about it. I have also lost both of my grandfathers to cancer, along with one of my mom's cousins who was very close to our family.

So this is why I decided to do the walk. I now need to begin an even more extensive training process for it. Turns out there will probably be a lot more involved than training to run a 10K. But with the help of some faithful companions who are always willing to go on a walk, Skylar and Atka, I think it will whip the three of us into great shape for the walk.