Thanks to our 3 Day Supporters!

This is the Tig-O-Bitties "bra"! I am not sure my sons would appreciate being referred to as a bra, but those are the breaks when you get involved in the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk. This crew consists of all of our hubbies, kids and our friend Hueso. Getting our children involved was very important so they could have a sense of the community and know a little bit more about why mom has been spending so much time training and fundraising. Many of our fellow walkers were jealous of our bra (two Expeditions, windows painted in pink and a tiny Toyota bearing signs like "don't slack - check your rack!") followed us daily and met us at our pit stops. While we stood in the potty lines at the pit stop, our hubbies were refilling our water and Gatorade - what a godsend! Our bra not only supported us, but they supported all walkers with Popsicles, ice, water and of course cheering. At one point, we texted our boys to let them know that we would love to have some visene and I kid you not, they pulled up 5 minutes later with two kinds of visene! I don't think the 3 of us could have asked for any more support from our families during our walk. They were thoughtful with roses, Popsicles, toilet seat covers, ice and even beer at the finish. A thousand thank yous to our wonderful "bra". Love you guys & gal!



I also want to mention the support we received from family, friends and co-workers attending our functions and bidding on silent auction items. Financial support is one of the most important aspects of the 3 Day. Thanks to Jen for selling our cards for us at her office and to MJ for selling over $2oo of our handmade cards to her co-workers in Montana!



I will leave you with one last pic of our friend Hueso in her day 3 support getup. At least she color coordinated with us!

We Did It!

Here we are at the opening ceremony - looking all fresh and ready to go! It was an amazing 3 days filled with tons of emotion, tears, memories, glide and a few blisters - but all 3 of us managed every step of the 60 miles with smiles on our faces (mostly!). I took yesterday to reflect and decide how I wanted to record my memories of this event here in my blog and I decided that I should do a few different posts about different aspects of my 3 Day walk experience. In this post I am going to focus on my team of friends and what I learned about them during our 3 days of walking and camping in tiny pink tents!

What I learned about Sand that I didn't already know...well for starters, she is blind as a bat! This was the source of much laughter in our tent especially when she was trying to find the zippered entrance to our tent using the braille method! Second...She is the strong silent type. While walking last year, Sand had heat exhaustion walking through Papago Park, so she was none too happy to see it on our route this year. This year I could tell she was tired and hurting but she quietly powered on in Papago Park until she announced to us that she was out of water! We eventually came across some 3 Day walk supporters with an extra water bottle so all was well. This year, even though it was on day 3, Sand conquered the beast known to her as Papago Park! Congratulations on taking every step and for not killing your crazy tent mate - ME!

What I learned about T that I didn't already know...hmmm, I just can't come up with anything! I already knew she has a good heart as she demonstrated on day 2 by giving her extra pair of socks to a lady we were walking behind. This lady (a breast cancer survivor) kept reaching down to pull her socks up as they would work their way back down into her shoes. T decided that this lady couldn't go the rest of the day pulling at her socks every 2o steps, so T insisted that the lady take her extra socks that she had been planning on changing into at lunch. I never got her name, but the lady was extremely grateful and T never thought twice about doing it. I also already knew that T is one tough chick! She walked a good portion of the 60 miles with a silver dollar sized blister on one of her heels and a good quarter sized area of missing skin on the top of her foot - the result of an allergic reaction to some tape she was using to protect the giant blister on her heel. Congrats on proving to yourself that you could do it again - this time in much more pain than the last!

Thanks to T and Sand for making my first 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk a fun memory filled time that I will never forget. Thank you ladies for all of your encouraging words and for putting up with my long legs keeping me a few steps ahead of you but never bagging on me for it! Thanks for helping me through the surprise attack I suffered during the first hour of the walk and for answering my hundreds of questions about what to expect during the walk with seemingly little annoyance. We worked with and worried about each other as a team and we started and finished as a team. Thanks for the memories - and helping me through my first 3 Day Walk! You guys are the best!

Here we are at the closing ceremony looking pretty darn happy!

Motivation

Here is our 3 Day Team - Team Tig-O-Bitties!

That is me on the left, Sand in the middle and T on the right. It was Sand's idea to pose like we were at glamor shots! Aren't we cute. We did our last long training walk this past Saturday. During our walk, a jogger approached us and told us "good job ladies" and she was applauding for us! We thanked her and asked her if she was also doing the 3 day walk. She told us that she was not but she had just wanted to stop and take a moment to personally thank us. She then went on to tell us that she would not be alive if not for the Susan G. Komen foundation! WOW!!! Goosebumps and tear city. That was a true motivator and now I have something to answer the question - WHY? - with when people ask me about the $2200 and the 60 miles and all the training time. You don't have to personally know a WHY to support this cause - over 182,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and over 40,000 women will die of breast cancer in 2008. This statistic does not take into account any men that will be diagnosed or die from breast cancer in 2008. Much has been made of the fact that breast cancer gets a lot of attention, possibly at the expense of other causes, but the fact is that breast cancer touches all of us in some way or another eventually. But I pray it doesn't...

3 Day Training Update

I was so excited to do this post and let everyone know that on Friday last week, I passed 120 miles of training! We only started at the end of September, so I am proud of all of the training we are squeezing in during our shortened training period. Thanks again to my hubby, G, for getting up every weekday to do 5 miles with me.

This is the not so happy part of my 3 day training update - on Friday afternoon I was putting a Longaberger 3 qt. dish in my hutch and it slid out of the hutch, landing square on my left big toe!!! My toe turned a nice shade of purple and throbbed so bad I hardly slept Friday night. Saturday I skipped our 14 mile walk (ya think?) and went to the urgent care for an x-ray. I kept explaining to them that normally I wouldn't be concerned except I am in training for the 3 day. What can they really do for a broken toe anyway? X-rays were negative so the kind Doc gave me some meds to help me heal and sleep and they wished me well. Doc told me that he would recommend at least a week off if not more, but to listen to my body and I should be fine. Three days of no training is already killing me but I am trying to be a good patient and use the down time to focus on additional fundraising, as I am still about $1000 shy of the $2200 and so is another of my teammates.

If you think about it, say a little prayer for my toe and also that we will meet our fundraising goals. Thanks.

My 3 Day link:
http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/Walk/ArizonaEvent?px=2770975&pg=personal&fr_id=1180

Funniest quote to come from the toe debacle - D, my 15 year old - "I always knew Longaberger would be the death of mom - I just thought it would be from all of the giant boxes that get delivered to the house!" Funny boy.