Seattle 3 Day Recap----Day 3!!

Day 3 is still like a dream to me, two weeks later.  There is so much adrenaline pumping through you as you walk these 60 miles.  We did wake up in our cozy warm (dry) bed on Sunday morning to the sound of pouring rain.  Good call on the taxi home, I might add.  The alarm was set for 5 a.m. with the taxi arriving at 6:30.  Showers felt wonderful and I spent at least 30 minutes building up moleskin and padding around my blisters to protect them in my tennis shoes.  Fanny packs ready and here comes the taxi.  $30 later, we arrive at the starting zone at Northwest Outpatient, a place that holds nothing but great karma for me :-)

We don't see any of our team mates yet, but with the rain coming down, we don't want to wait either.  We collect our route cards and off we go, knowing we will be heading east to come up to Capitol Hill and then ending at Seattle Center somewhow.  Today's route card looks vastly easier than the prior two days:

15.2 Miles, Baby!!

We head down Meridian Avenue, partially around Green Lake and south. 

 Terry and I have decided that I should sweep up the hill when we get to Capitol Hill, so when we get that far, I sweep uphill, less than a mile (with LOTS of other people I might add) and wait for him at Volunteer Park, the lunch stop.  The most annoying thing though is that I know I could tackle that hill, no problem, under normal circumstances.  Oh well, onward and upward.  People are panting and huffing as they make the top of that hill and my husband is no exception.  We take a photo by the cute sign.  I felt as if I could be the mascot of the "Island of Owie"!

But I really loved seeing this guy who showed up with pink roses and waited for someone to reach the top of the hill



And this guy, one of many firefighters who walked all 60 miles in full gear, with tanks on their backs

After the usual lunch of sandwich, fruit and chips, Terry heads off on foot downhill to the waterfront while I board yet another sweep van to meet him there.  It's 2.8 miles, the longest sweep I had done yet, but I told him I wanted to walk the final last 5 miles even if it killed me.  Fortunately, the rain is starting to break at this point, at people are out in masses at the waterfront.  I am ready to WALK! 

When we get to the waterfront, the energy is starting to build.  The sun is shining and people are cheering!  We walk through this pathway of cheerleaders...

It was so fun to feel

like a rock star!

As we leave the pier, we head north to walk through Sculpture Park.  How awesome is this?

Looking back, I see this glorious sight

The Space Needle is in view, so we know we are minutes from reaching the holding area.  And I have no idea what is in store for us. 

As we near Seattle Center, we hear ROARS of cheering.  We round the corner and the thousands of people that are here is overwhelming.  They are cheering us on, cheering us in and unemotional me (ha!) starts crying like  a baby all of the way in to the holding area.  People are hugging me, saying "awesome job" high-fiving Terry and it is overwhelming. 

At this moment, I feel like Rocky.  Strong, successful, courageous, amazing!  Foot pain, WHAT foot pain?????    We enter the holding area where this darling girl hands me a rose and we get our walker T Shirts

I have to admit, I am very happy that I carried my flip flops on my fanny pack all day today.  There was nothing sweeter than taking my tennis shoes off and putting flip flops on. 

Everyone else was very envious of me!

We waited for all of the walkers to arrive, which took about another hour or so. 

 I have been text messaging with my sister in law, who was in the stands, as were all of our kids.

We all leave the holding area together and in mass, walk into Memorial Stadium.  I can imagine football players running through the tunnel where we are now walking.  The people in the stands are cheering and the music is playing. 

Everyone is jubilant and I am handed a flag to hold during the ceremonies.  That makes me Happy!  As the ceremonies begin, the emotions are again high.  The survivor circle is saluted with a one shoe salute by the rest of the walkers

When the flag is raised in honor of those lost, it brings the entire 3 days to closure. 

When I had lunch with a friend yesterday, she asked me if I would ever do the 3 day walk again.

My answer, without skipping a beat, was "In a heartbeat."

It was by far, the most adventurous, brave and ambitious thing I have ever done.  Pitfalls, knees, blisters and all.  It was an experience of a lifetime.  As far as 2011?  Terry and I have signed up to be on the Seattle 3 day Crew!

3 Day Recap Day 2

I was obviously dreaming when I thought I would be posting Day 2 the day after I posted day 1!  I have some time this morning, so here we go!

Saturday of the 3 day walk was predicted to be a glorious day.  Temperature in the upper 70's!  We woke up easily in our little pink tent because the tents are literally inches apart and alarms start going off around 5 a.m.  I was able to sleep from pure exhaustion, though I did wake up at times when my two blistered heels would touch one another.  It is really hard to get dressed in a tiny tent on an air mattress, FYI.  Terry and I each had to move to the opposite side of the tent to have room to manuever, find clothes and put them on.  What is really funny is that I brought a spray bottle and a mirror and a tiny bit of makeup with me.  Ummmmm, forget about it.  I went to the honey bucket, then to the sink to brush my teeth, ran some water through my hands to straighten my hair and on that hat went.  No makeup.  Lovely.  But we all looked the same.  Except, you could tell the campers who had booked a hotel or had gone home, as you were walking.  Nice hair, a little makeup, a little less bedraggled than we were!   

Now, there were those lovely feet to deal with, so I went to the self-help tent to try to figure out how to dress those blisters in order to get shoes on.  As I am waiting, Olwen (my goddess) shows up and offers to dress them for me.  Awwww, she is so kind!  At least 30 minutes later, I have my shoes on, but man is it ever painful.  Especially the blood blister, which is easily 3/4" high.  So it takes a lot of building up the padding to protect it and then makes the shoe tighter and more pressure on the right side.  But, the shoe is on.  Each step feels like needles stabbing me.  If only I could take some serious pain meds but then that isn't great for walking.  So shoes are on and Terry meets me for breakfast.  We are anxious to get started and I know that Linda and Mom and Jan are planning to meet us at the cheering station.  Yes!

As we start out, our route card shows the plan for the day:

21.7 miles with the first Cheering station at mile 6.6 and the second one at 19.6.

Off we go, leaving the park and heading north to Everett.  I make it to pit stop one by basically tip toeing on my right foot to prevent the pain when the heel hits the ground.  Terry and I decide I should sweep to pit stop 2, which is only 2 more miles away.  I give in, knowing that the probability of me walking 22 miles is low today.  But, I don't like it.  I don't like it one bit.  I can't help shedding a few tears of defeat as I enter the van.  Sitting next to me is a young woman who is bald.  She is quiet.  I show her the picture I have of Jess, also with no hair and I tell her that they both look beautiful with no hair.  She gives a little laugh and tells me that she had a chemo treatment on Thursday, the day before the walk started.  She has friends walking with her and she is walking as much as she can and then sweeping in between.  WOW.  Talk about inspiring.  And I am reminded that this is why I am here.  We have to eliminate this disease.

Feeling a little bolstered by that encounter, we get to pit stop 2 and I meet up withTerry.  The first cheering station is 4 miles away.  I send Linda a text message that we will likely be about an hour and she texts back that they have been there for awhile.  I know that when they post the cheering stations, they give a big time window because it does depend on when the walker starts out.  Off we go, me tip toeing on that right foot as much as possible.  As we walk past Forest Park and head up the hill, we can hear the people cheering.  It is an incredible sight to see a HUGE arch of pink balloons over the street.  Beyond that, for the next 3/4 of a mile are hundreds and hundreds of people cheering us on.  It was amazing!  Of course, we had our own cheering squad:

 

You cann not imagine how much energy you get from the people cheering you on!  Linda even organized a sign making party the night before.  How fun.  Mom had a fabulous time watching all of the walkers in their crazy costumes and the comradarie of the crowd. 

A complete stranger gave Mom a chair to sit in.  That is the kind of event this is.  We needed to keep moving, so we kissed our cheerleaders goodbye and headed on down the hill into Everett. 

By now, my feet are dying and we are 2 miles from lunch, so Terry waves down another sweep van and I head off to Legion Park (where we were married:) to wait for him.  It is a beautiful day and a beautiful setting to sit down and take a load off of my feet.  I take my shoes off and just breathe. 

Terry arrives a little while later and we enjoy our lunch of sandwich, fruit and chips.  It is hard to get up and move from here and even harder to put my shoes back on.  We hobble on (well, I hobble and Terry walks) out of the park and onward.  It really is a gorgeous day and we are enjoying it along with all of the supporters lining the streets.  We saw all kinds of costumes and I wish I had taken more pictures of them.  I want to make it to the next cheering station, but around mile 16 I am done.  Done with a capital D.  I have to say, it really is not fun when you have trained for so long and given up so many weekends to not be able to complete every mile of the actual event because of blisters.  The regular blisters I could definitely walk on, but that blood blister has been in so much pain that I succumb to the reality that my day 2 is over.  I get on the bus and head to camp to get the tennis shoes off. 

Now, on day 1, I was so exhausted that I pretty much didn't even notice camp.  Getting there before most of the walkers, gave me an opportunity to really SEE it for the first time.  I went straight to our tent to get those shoes off and what a relief that was.  I headed to the showers, knowing that the lines would soon be very long. 

That shower felt fabulous.  It was only in the shower that I could remove my bandages because of the ointment Olwen used to keep the mole skin from moving.  It's like super glue for skin.  Flip flops on, body clean and hair shampooed, I feel so much better.  If I could have walked in flip flops, I would have been much more successful.  The pressure was removed from my feet, though the blisters still hurt and I was limping a bit, it was 100% better without shoes on. 

I took the opportunity to check camp out for the first time.  There was the village, where shops were set up and chair massages were being given.  It didn't take long to convince myself to partake in that.  It was fabulous.

  After my little massage and lots of water, I stoll over to the memorial area.

Each of the smaller tents is for a city that the walk is being held in.  The large tent in the center is in memorium to walkers who have been lost to breast cancer.  The faces of the young are everywhere.  I am alone in this tent.  But I am not alone.  All of these faces, young and old, are beautiful.  Brave.  And each one reminds me that we can not give up.  This is not about walking, really.  This is about raising awareness, raising money, eliminating breast cancer.  I tell them all thank you.  It is hard not to be touched while you are in their presence.

I am happy for this time in camp to be alone and reverant. 

Shortly after, my team arrives including my incredible husband who is tired but still going strong.  He heads off to the showers and I sit waiting for the rest of the team to arrive.  It's about 4:00 and the wind is really starting to pick up.  The weather has been much of the topic of the day.  We have heard that there is a storm blowing in and Sunday is supposed to be rainy, with the weather starting in the night.  We know we are also being shuttled to Sunday's starting point, Northwest Outpatient Center (Dr. Story's office location!) and we have to be out of camp by 7 a.m.  I am picturing trying to get dressed, getting my feet ready, taking down our tent and packing, all in the rain and all before 7 a.m.  We also heard that the prior year, campers were standing in line for the buses forever and eneded up being shuttled to the lunch point instead.  They were very unhappy about that, as we would have been.  Terry and I agree that we might be better off taking a taxi home and then taxiing to Northwest Outpatient in the morning so that I can take the time to dress my feet and not worry about the rain. 

During dinner, we tell our team mates our plan and donate our tent to a mother-daughter team.  They were looking forward to having a tent to themselves, since they are both quite tall and were scrunched in a little pink tent. 

After dinner, we listened to Candy Coburn, who is the official singer for the Susan G Komen foundation.  She wrote Pink Warrior which is a song about a woman fighting breast cancer. 

When that was over, Terry and I went to pack up our things and called a cab to meet us at 7:00.  A short cab ride later and we were walking in our door.  It never looked quite so good, even in its messy state from the pre-walk packing. 

8:00 lights out.  Cab ride ordered for the morning at 6:30 and alarm set for 5:00 a.m.  Plenty of time to dress my feet.

3 Day ReCap - Day One

Life has been non-stop since the Seattle 3 day.  I think Tath's idea of heading to Hawaii for 2 weeks was the best one.  Me?  Well, I guess I prefer working non-stop, listing my Mom's condo and deciding to move her the very next weekend after the walk.  What was I thinking?   This is when my motto "I can sleep when I am dead" comes in.  The good news is that Mom is in her new condo, everything is out of the old one and all of her boxes are unpacked and removed.  We have a little tweaking to do here and there but her place already looks like home with pictures hung!

Enough about that!  The 3 day was on eof the most incredible experiences I have ever had.  It encompassed physical exhaustion, emotional joy and sorrow, witnessing the strength and perserverance of many and the outright love and generosity of complete strangers.  It was a WOW all the way around the block.

The Thursday before the walk, the entire team was staying in Bellevue at the Hilton for ease of transport to the opening ceremonies Friday morning.  After hearing horror stories of walkers getting stuck in our infamous traffic and missing opening ceremonies, we hastily agreed to the hotel option that included a shuttle to opening.  Tath had secured the party room at Azteca for our family/team dinner and our family joined us for a fun send off.  Although I was very excited to start the walk, I found that I had calmed down once my bags were packed.  I slept like a baby until our 3 a.m. wake up call and excitedly boarded the bus at 4:30 in the morning.  Little did I know that I still had a 23 mile walk ahead of me!

The line of traffic and headlights heading into the Redmond Park was amazing to see so early in the morning.  Reports were that there were 2400 Seattle walkers.  That equates to a lot of cars pulling into the opening ceremony park.    We took our group photo in the dark.

And then Terry and I took our first official 3 day pic!



There was a lot of excitement in the air.  Tath was going to be a part of opening ceremonies, carrying a flag as a survivor.  The rest of the team gathered at the front of the walker's pen and I shed tears during the emotional start of what we had been training and planning for since March.  The flag is raised with the names of those that were lost, bringing the meaning of this journey full circle. 

A few minutes later, we headed to the other end of the park, collected our route card and started the first steps of 60 miles. 

Now, while the route card says 22.5 miles, the actual amount we walked on day 1 was more like 25 when you consider the opening ceremonies, and camp site walking.  I love when I tell people we walked from Redmond to Everett.  The look on their face is priceless!  I really did great, my legs were fine until we hit about mile 18 or 19.  My knee was awesome!  I iced it during lunch as a just-in-case measure, but it didn't bother me at all.  Along the walk, we encountered some supporters, lots of volunteers in pink and were elated to see our daughter Andrea and her partner Jackie at the cheering station.  It was a Friday and most people were working, so the turnout was light.

My feet were burning by this point.  I had taped my feet in the morning with moleskin and duct tape, also in prevention.  There was no way I was stopping to look with a mere 5 miles left to walk, so onward I trudged.  The last two miles were pure torture.  When we rounded a corner that had a sign that said "1 mile to camp" I thought I would break down into a 2 year old temper tantrum right there.  Rather than being elated, I thought I could not step one more step with the foot pain I was experiencing.  My husband, God love him, held my hand the last 2 miles, encouraging me every step of the way.  When we finally climbed the hill into camp, the vast camp site, larger than a football field was also daunting.  Pick up your bags to the right, find your tent site, put up your tent, inflate your air mattress, etc.  During all of this time, I did nothing. My amazing husband did it all.  When the air mattress was inflated, I crawled inside, laid down and closed my eyes.  Breathe, breathe, breathe.  I can honestly say that I have never been that exhausted in all of my life.  A few minutes later, I scrambled in my suitcase for my flip flops and slowly (and painfully) removed my shoes.  Aha, that is why I was in so much pain.  Crap!

On my right foot, larger than a quarter, was a blood blister.  On my left foot, I had a regular blister, 4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide.  Great.  I hobbled to the medical tent (another football field away).  They took one look at the blood blister, said they should lance it but if they did I would be red-carded.  Awesome!  Work your behind off for months, train every weekend and this happens.  I exit stage left, no one is going to red card me and send me home!  Not going to happen!  I hobble over tot he self-help area and gather some alcohol wipes and begin cleaning it off.  Later, after a shower, I clean both feet again and decide not to bandage them for the evening.  Open air is likely the best healer of all. 

Still exhausted but feeling slightly better after my shower in the shower trailer, Terry and I head to dinner.  Why is everything so dang far away???  Sheesh!

By 8:00 that night, I was done.  Done with a capital D.  Up since 3 a.m. walked about 25 miles and major foot pain going on.  That little tent and that air mattress were looking pretty good to me at this point.

A good night's sleep was in order in our home away from home.  Day 2 tomorrow!