Amazing Donations!

Although my training might not be going too well this year, the fundraising has been fabulous during these first 10 days! Thank you, friends, for your amazing generosity! Chad's Aunt Meg got me started, just like she did last year, and my mom's friend Carol was close behind. The donations have been steadily pouring in, and today I got a $500 donation from a friend who is also a breast cancer survivor! Thank you so much--you know who you are! :)

Along with the donations of money to my 3-Day account, this weekend I also got a terrific in-kind donation as well! Let me start the story by saying that the right shoes are extremely important when walking 60 miles, so the first year I did the 3-Day I went to a specialty shoe store and was professionally fitted for shoes (which were very expensive) for the walk--and they ended up fitting so poorly that I couldn't even wear them after the first couple of months of training! After that I went to Famous Footwear and fit myself for my shoes...and I've had terrific luck with all the ones I've picked out on my own--not to mention I've spent way less!

So anyway, I was just thinking that I needed to get out to Famous Footwear and get some new shoes for this year's walk, and then I was talking to our friend Ryan, who owns/manages Brown's Shoe Fit in downtown Lawrence. Ryan said that instead of giving me a donation of money for the walk this year, he would actually donate my shoes--and I don't mean the cheap $50 shoes I've been buying myself the previous 3 years! I went down to his store on Thursday, and Ryan let me try on several different (all pink, of course) pairs, and in the end he GAVE me these awesome Pumas, with some fancy Thorlos as well!



This was an amazing gift, and I can't thank Ryan enough for his incredible generosity! Hooray for Ryan at the Lawrence Brown's Shoe Fit! :)

It's Official

Despite the fact that I haven't been training very seriously, I am still planning to walk in Dallas next month, and I just made that plan official! You can be the first one to donate on my 3-Day fundraising page! More to come soon!

Recruiting

Last week I sent out a recruitment letter to a bunch of my friends--basically any of my friends who I thought might have the slightest interest in participating in the 3-Day with me. I have a couple of friends who have had close family members with breast cancer, so I was hopeful that someone would be moved to participate, but no such luck. I have to admit I'm a little down that no one was interested and a little discouraged that I still don't have a team. Here's the letter that I sent out:

Dear friends,

As you all know, in each of the last three years I've participated in the Breast Cancer 3-Day--a 60 mile walk that raises money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. In 2006, just after my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was recruited by my friend Cindy to walk with her team in the Kansas City event. Two years ago, when there was no KC event, I recruited my friend Vikkie to walk with me in San Diego--the largest of the 15 annual 3-Day events. The San Diego event was absolutely amazing, and I wanted my mom to have that experience, so last year I recruited her and my brother to walk 60 miles with me in southern California. As you can imagine, watching my 62-year-old mother complete all 60 miles was incredible, and last year was definitely the most meaningful of my three 3-Days. I could go on and on about what a fabulous experience the event has been, but most of you have probably heard me talk about the event in person or seen it through my pictures.

This year, even though my mom has decided not to walk, I'm planning to walk in my fourth 3-Day. I'm walking again because I still want to honor my mom and celebrate her three years of being free of breast cancer. I'm walking again because so many other women in my family and in my life have been forever changed because of this disease. I'm walking again because 15% of breast cancer survivors will someday have a recurrence. I'm walking again because I have a higher than normal risk of developing breast cancer myself. I'm walking again because I can.

My plan this year is to participate in the Dallas/Fort Worth event. It will be an easy drive and I'll be able to stay with family the nights before and after the walk. It's not until early November, and the weather in Dallas should be comfortable by that time. I'm telling you all of this because I want you to consider walking the 3-Day with me. While I will likely be participating regardless, I would much rather make the journey with friends! I'm asking all of you specifically, because you're all people that a) are in good enough shape that you could get by with just 12 weeks of training, and b) are friends that I'd love to spend more time with! Some of you have even expressed interest in the past or have a passion for fighting against breast cancer, making you the perfect person to walk with me! :)

I won't deny that this endeavor is slightly time consuming, so I totally understand if your work/school/child schedule won't allow for training and fundraising. Each participant is required to raise $2200 in order to participate, and although it's much easier than it sounds, it still requires some effort. In addition, in the month prior to the event, the Sat/Sun walks take a pretty good chunk out of the weekend. While training for a walk might seem a little unnecessary, it's definitely essential if you want to avoid blisters and other injuries! However, for the first two years I followed the 3-Day's suggested 24-week and 16-week training schedules, and I definitely felt over-prepared. Last year I modified the 16 week schedule somewhat, and still did not find the 60 miles especially challenging. This year I've devised a much shorter 12 week training schedule that I'm confident will be sufficient, and that schedule will start next week! If you'd like to see the schedule and get an idea of what it would entail, you can check it out here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXc8jjDet9vFqP3sBFlh5a4KHMa9GD61_GxveYj2YDG47p-wFxX54EjnAcxdP6O6Zl92G-Wh_SvjEXM7D3wxVSLD5-7baEhKyNxwlzpImBgfg_Z0dWaCCUE1GhDbhsAqQgaFKGG_Us_bI/s1600-h/training09.jpg.

There's a ton more information to check out on the web if you think you might be interested. Here are just a few links:

My personal 3-Day journal--http://3dayjournal.blogspot.com/
My personal pictures 2008--http://picasaweb.google.com/kimluce99/2008112420083Day#
Pictures 2007--http://picasaweb.google.com/chadluce/20071115SanDiego#
Pictures 2006--http://picasaweb.google.com/chadluce/2006BreastCancer3Day#
The 3-Day Website--http://www.the3day.org
Some videos from the 3-Day--http://www.the3day.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Videos
(the first one is my favorite)

Should you decide to participate, I promise the 3-Day will be an experience you will never forget, especially if breast cancer has affected your life or your family in a profound way. My mom still faces the physical scars and complications from her surgeries every day. She can't forget, so I can't forget either--which is why I keep walking. As one of the participants in the video (who I actually saw again last year in San Diego) said, "I have two choices: I can be here, or not...I'm just glad I'm here." That completely expresses how I feel. I hope you'll consider being there too!! If you're at all interested...give me a shout! :)

Hugs,
kjl

Since that didn't motivate anyone to join me, I've gone out looking for anyone in the Lawrence area who might be doing Dallas this year, so that maybe I can join their team or find a training partner. I've posted a couple of messages to the 3-Day Facebook page, so hopefully someone in my area will see them and respond! I feel like a walker without a home!!

Dallas, Anyone?

It's that time again. The 3-Day season officially started a few weeks ago. For the last several months I've been contemplating participation this year, and I'm leaning towards driving down for the Dallas event. It would be relatively close and inexpensive, and since it's not until November, the weather wouldn't be bad at all. I invited my mom to walk with me again, but she isn't feeling up for it this year, which means that I'm currently a team of only one. To remedy this, in the next couple of days I'll be sending out an email to a bunch of my friends encouraging them to participate in the 3-Day with me. Hopefully my recruitment letter will work. :)

Technically, I'm under a bit of a time crunch since I'm making this decision a little late. The 3-Day folks recommend 24 weeks to prepare, and as of right now there are only 13 weeks until the event. I'm not worried about the fundraising--I think that's always a bit easier when the crunch is on. I'm actually not too worried about the training either, only because I've done the 24-week and 16-week training schedules and have felt over-prepared both times. I'm pretty confident that I can prepare myself sufficiently in the next 12 weeks, partially because I walk pretty regularly as it is--I just need to add some long walks on the weekends. Here's the 12 week training schedule I've prepared for myself.


That doesn't look too bad, does it? Anyone interested in coming to Dallas with me? Anyone? Bueller?

More Videos

I've loaded the remaining videos onto YouTube, so if you're at all inclined, you can visit my personal "channel" here and check them out. Most are self-explanatory, I think, and just consist of a lot of people cheering! The people who come out and support the walkers every day on the route are so incredible. They are always so encouraging and entertaining. This year, there were supporters who made us laugh and cry as well!

The one video that probably needs a little explanation is the one that I think might be the funniest. Let me first say that I knew I had the camera turned sideways--I'd actually learned not to make this mistake after messing up several videos with my old camera. However, this camera appeared to right itself when you recorded a video sideways--at least it did in playback mode. I was trying to test it out, to see if would reorient its videos, when we came upon this guy singing while he was walking. It was so hysterical I couldn't stop recording! In case you can't tell, he's doing Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer. It was absolutely hilarious! Hopefully you can turn your laptop or yourself sideways to watch it! :)

Pictures!!

I've finally resized, uploaded, sorted, culled and captioned all of my pictures from last weekend! I deleted enough pictures from other Picasa folders to get the majority of the pictures loaded (there were actually about 360 total, if you can believe it), but I couldn't make room for all of the videos on the site, so those that didn't make it to Picasa will eventually make it to YouTube so that I can share them all! Only one has finished uploading to YouTube so far, but it's a pretty funny (and slightly startling) video, I think.



These girls wore outrageous outfits like this every day, most of which didn't cover much of their bodies! I love the family with all the boobs on their hats too--they were great! Hopefully by tomorrow morning there will be more than just this one!

So here is the full slideshow of all the pictures and a few other videos. If you'd like to view the slideshow a little bigger, you can visit my Picasa page directly by clicking here. I hope to write more about the walk very soon, but the pictures should give you a pretty good idea of what an amazing time we had!

Sneak Peek of Pictures

Tonight I was so excited to load all of my pictures from our trip and post a slideshow to the blog. Unfortunately, once I loaded the pictures onto the computer, I realized that my new camera was set to such a high picture quality that my folder of 3-Day pictures won't even come close to fitting on my Picasa page!! Argh! I'm so bummed--the trip was amazing and I can't wait to share! I guess maybe I'll look into making a Flickr page or something tomorrow to see if I can find another website on which to post the pictures. For now, here are just a couple of sneak peeks--us freezing before the opening ceremony started and a very happy us after closing ceremonies!

The other bummer about my pictures is that a bunch of them turned out kind of blurry. Granted, I was walking and taking pictures at the same time, which isn't exactly a recipe for steady shooting, but I think maybe there was some sort of setting that was making the autofocus area super small in certain cases--I just can't figure out what it was! Maybe I should have actually read the camera manual on the plane to California or something!

Regardless, the trip was great. My mom did awesome and walked the entire 60 miles without hitching a ride (like hundreds of other walkers do)! I am so proud of her and had so much fun with my brother. I hope to have pictures and to share more of the details very soon!

We're Here!!

We made it safely to San Diego today and are trying to get to bed early as we prepare to get up at 4 a.m. for the second morning in a row! Last night was a late one as I finished up our t-shirts and other last minute packing and preparations, but I think the t-shirts turned out pretty good--a definite improvement over last year!

So tomorrow our months and months of hard work and hours spent will finally pay off. Our team raised almost $8000 (if you haven't donated yet and want to give us about $25 we'll get there!) and walked hundreds and hundreds of miles in preparation. I hope this will be an amazing experience for my dear family that will be worth all the hard work!

Thanks to everyone for all of your wonderful support! We couldn't have done this without you!! :)

Our Route

I'm so excited because this year the 3-Day folks sent out something that we didn't have last year--a map of our walking route! Last year I just had to guess at where we had been for three days! This time we'll have a better idea of where we are going and where we went! If you're interested, you can click on the map below for a larger image!

Eighteen Miles: The Condensed Version

Once again it's late and I'm tired after a busy evening of making 3-Day related preparations. I should go to bed, but I'm afraid that I'll never get around to sharing the story of our 18 mile walk on Sunday if I don't do it now. I'm going to try to keep it short, although I'm generally terrible at condensing a story, as you might have noticed. Maybe some bullet points will help!

• We left at about 11:30 a.m. I wanted to leave about 10:30, but Mom was late getting to my house. We couldn't leave much earlier though because it was COLD in the morning.
  
• We walked about 4 miles to the Dillons at 6th and Wakarusa, where we borrowed the facilities. The highlight of this leg was the hill on Peterson up to Monterey Way. The lowlight was the cold wind we were walking into!
• We walked about another 2-3 miles to the Miller Mart at 23rd and Wakarusa, where we bought some water and sat for a few minutes while we refilled our bottles. The highlight of this leg was definitely the beautiful sunshine in our faces! We stretched a few minutes and headed down back out onto the trail.
• We literally hooked into the hike/bike trail as we reached the end of Wakarusa, and followed it 3-4 more miles out to the movie theaters, where we were able to cut across a couple of parking lots to make it to our destination--Target! The highlights of this leg were seeing a beautiful hawk sitting on someone's fence and walking along the scenic treeline and by various ponds. We did stop for just a few minutes in this leg to do a little more stretching!
• We stopped at Target for probably 40 minutes or so, splitting a terrific sandwich and following it up with a large cinammon pretzel. Yum! After buying some Gatorade we headed back out onto the trail.
  
• We walked back up to Lawrence Avenue and followed it all the way to 23rd, where we cut around the new parking area by the new research building on West Campus, and then wound up the hill to my office at KU Endowment. While Mom took another break and stretched, I logged onto Google maps and checked to see how far it would be for us to walk to Jack's, where Chad was watching the Steelers game. We determined that it would take us too long to get there and we should probably just head straight home. After changing socks and using the facilities, we headed back out to walk, but unfortunately by this time the sun was starting to go down and it was getting cold!!
  
• We walked across the street from my office and took a detour through Pioneer Cemetery, which sadly I'd never done in 10 years of working right next to it. Talk about fascinating! There are so many graves of people who died in Quantrill's Raid--I had no idea!
• We headed towards main campus as the sun went down, walking around the dorms and down 15th and up Naismith hill and down Jayhawk Boulevard. All very pretty, but very cold. We cut through the Union, stretched a few minutes, and then went out the back door to wind around the stadium up to Maine street.
  
• We walked all the way down Maine past 6th, which wasn't just cold--it was treacherous! There are a lot of uneven sidewalks in Old West Lawrence, and unfortunately not a lot of streetlights!
  
• After crossing 6th we made a quick facilities stop at the hospital, and then walked the last 1+ mile to our house, singing the Hallelujah chorus most of the way (literally--we were signing Handel's Messiah because it helped keep us going)!
• We arrived home at about 6:30, but after walking for most of the day, it felt like 10:00! We made it though, and Mom did great!
  

Okay, so the bullets didn't really help the length of my post, but at least I got it done in about 20 minutes! :)

Nine Days and Counting

The saga about our 18 mile walk on Sunday will have to wait at least one more night, since this evening has been consumed with all sorts of other 3-Day tasks. We leave in just nine days, and I have to admit I'm panicking a little just thinking about all that needs to be done between now and then!

Let me just fill you in a little on what's going on in the world of 3-Day preparation:

1. Our team is officially finished with fundraising! Hooray! I received a generous check from my wonderful friend Dan this weekend from Set'em Up Jack's. We brought in about $900 in sales the night of our fundraiser, 30% of which Dan donated to our team (even though he was only supposed to donate 25%!). I sent that check off in the mail to Eric's account, which will put him well over the $2200 mark once it's posted! Part of my evening was spent sending thank-yous to our most recent supporters and organizing my donor database!

2. T-shirts are still in the works. I talked to Mandi at Midwest Graphics today, and although she was super helpful, we ultimately realized they couldn't print our shirts because there's an unlicensed Jayhawk on them! Therefore, I've decided to print our shirts in house again this year (that means I'll be ironing them on), and tonight I put the finishing touches on our new logo.

First, the 2007 logo:


Compared to the new 2008 logo:


What do you think? Is it an improvement?

3. I'm working on updating our honorary/memorial list. Last year, Vikkie and I wore the names of all the people for whom we were walking on the back of our shirts for all 60 miles of our walk. I would like to do the same this year, so I'm preparing to email all of our donors to see if there is anyone we should add before printing our final list. Putting together my email list is taking some time since I've been blessed with so many supporters!

That's all for tonight's update! Thanks for your support and thanks for visiting my 3-Day blog!

A Cold Eight Miles

This weekend was an 18/8 mile weekend, and since there was a KU game I wanted to see on Saturday, we decided to do the 8 miles yesterday and the 18 miles today. My 8 mile walk yesterday can be summed up in two words: cold and quick!! Chad bundled up with me in the morning and we took the dogs our for a very brisk almost 4 mile walk. The wind was super strong and the temp was in the upper 30s, so it was darn cold!! After dropping the dogs and Chad off at home I headed back out to walk my 4+ additional miles with the ipod as my partner, which helped me keep up that super fast pace! I finished my 8 cold miles with an average pace of 14:31 miles, which was very fast considering Mom and I have been walking 17-18 minutes miles on average. Needless to say, my hips/back were very sore when I woke up this morning!

Mom walked her 8 miles yesterday a little later in the afternoon, so she didn't get nearly as cold as we did in the morning. She emailed me last night to say that she had walked about 7.6 outside until it was too dark to see, and then she walked up and down the stairs at her house until her pedometer finally read 8 miles. Now that's dedication!!

I'm exhausted and sore from today's 18 miles, so I'll have to write about that walk tomorrow!!

T-Shirts

A few weeks ago when Mom and I walked at the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin we found a t-shirt that we just had to buy for my brother. We almost bought an all pink version that just said "Real Men Wear Pink" but then we both decided that Eric probably wouldn't wear it under any circumstance. We settled on this version instead, modeled here by my wonderful and obviously reluctant husband.

Hopefully my brother will actually wear it!

Speaking of t-shirts, this year Eric has a friend who actually wants to purchase a Jayhawks for Jugs t-shirt! Since the t-shirts we wore to the event last year were actually homemade and not really worth purchasing, I'm kind of tossing around the idea of getting some real t-shirts printed, but I might try to make some logo modifications first. I kind of think the logo looks pretty homemade too!

Another Easy Week

This last weekend Mom and I were scheduled to walk just 10 and 8 miles on Saturday and Sunday respectively. We decided to do a flip-flop, and instead walk our shorter 8 mile walk on Saturday so that I could get to the KU/K-State game on time. Mom stayed the night on Friday, and we got up early on Saturday and took the dogs for a quick 4 mile walk. We dropped them off and got a quick snack, and then headed back out for another 4 miles. We were done with our 8 miles before 9 a.m.! Mom is always amazed when we walk that far and it seems like we're just getting started!

On Sunday, our plan was to start our 10 miles around Mom's house in Topeka, and then to head off to Chapman where would attend a special ceremony at Mom's old church before finishing our walk around the tiny town. Unfortunately, after feeling a little crappy all week, I woke up Sunday morning feeling really sick, so I sent Mom out on her own to walk the first five miles. I slept a little longer, and then stopped off for a sprite and saltines before heading on to Topeka later in the morning.

Thankfully Mom had already done 6 miles by the time I arrived to pick her up for our Chapman trip, so after the ceremony we were able to easily walk our last 4 miles while sightseeing around Mom's tiny hometown. There were only a few neighborhoods of the little town that we didn't walk through! Walking around the city park brought back some memories for me as well, since I spent many hours playing in that park with my cousins as a child. It was really a fun day and quite an adventure!

Unfortunately, by the time we got back to Topeka that evening I was feeling the stomach bug in full force, and I've been in bed for the last two days trying to kick it. I just want to make sure I'm over the illness completely before I go back to work, since we have another big 18 mile walk this weekend! It's our last big walk before we head to San Diego in just barely over 2 weeks!