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!

Lazy Weekend of Walking

You might have noticed that I never blogged about last weekend's training walks. That's mostly because Mom and I didn't walk together last weekend, and partially because I slacked off quite a bit on the walking I did do! After our 18/15 walks the weekend before, we were only scheduled to do recovery walks of 10 and 6. Mom did pretty well on her own, walking about 7 and 6 on Saturday and Sunday respectively. I, however, only walked about 6 on Saturday before going to the KU game, and then only walked about 4 on Sunday while walking dogs at the shelter. I was pretty lazy--but it was only because I had so many other things going on!

This weekend is another easy weekend since we did back to back hard weekends when we changed up the schedule a couple of weeks ago. We're supposed to do walks of 10 and 8 on Saturday and Sunday, but will probably only do 8 tomorrow since there's another early football game to schedule around. On Sunday we're taking a special trip and doing our 10 miles in a special town, so hopefully I'll have a good story to tell after our walk!

Fundraising Progress

I've been slacking on the 3-Day updates lately, but that's only because there's been so much going on! Last Thursday, on the same day we had our Pack Jack's event at Set'em Up Jack's, the Wellness Committee at my office (headed by a very dedicated and motivated Pam) put on a fundraiser for my team over the lunch hour. They sold donated pizza and baked goods and raffled off a bunch of other goodies and raised almost $400!! It was amazing! At the event, another of my coworkers gave me a $500 donation for the team as well, which will put my mom over her $2200 minimum once it posts to her account! Since Eric is only about $800 away himself, we are getting very close to being finished with our fundraising!

The evening at Jack's went pretty well also, with 40 or so people coming specifically to support our team. I haven't heard from Dan about how much money we raised, but hopefully soon I'll be able to deposit another $100 or so into Eric's account. I'm glad we're getting close, because there are only 23 days until the event!

Thank you to everyone who came to the work fundraiser, to the Jack's fundraiser or just made a donation to my mom's or brother's account recently! I am so thankful that fundraising is almost over!

The 15 That Followed

As I mentioned yesterday, I was a bit worried about doing our 15 miles on Sunday after Saturday's 18, since Mom had been too tired for back-to-back long walks the previous weekend. When she got up Sunday morning, however, she didn't have too many aches and pains and was eager to get started. We decided to start with just a 5 mile loop, but about 4 miles in, Mom decided that she wanted to go for coffee. We went a couple of miles out of the way to McDonalds, where we enjoyed coffee and a fruit and yogurt cup! It was a very nice break!

McDonalds is only a couple of miles from home, so once we got home we had already knocked off about 7 miles of our day, which was great! After a short reload of fluids and snacks, we headed back out onto the walking trail, this time with a particular destination in mind! Chad was on his way to watch the Steelers game at Set'em Up Jack's, which is all the way across town--but in reality that's only about 6 miles! We decided that Jack's would be the perfect motivation, since as soon as we arrived we could finally eat lunch!

Since the restaurant was only 6 miles away and we needed to do 8 miles, we took our first detour up to campus, where we walked past the new football facility and up Campanile Hill. We stopped off at the Union to fill up on drinks, and the nice girl working at the gift shop there even inquired about our walk! It's really nice when people ask what we're doing instead of just staring/laughing at our fanny packs and water bottles!

We walked around campus a little and took in the fall beauty while I showed Mom all the new facilities that had been built since Eric and I had been in school. After our little tour we headed east towards Jack's, stopping once for a pit stop and more water at Kwik Shop. At that point we were only about 2 miles away, and we needed closer to 3 miles to be finished, so we took a slight detour to the Lawrence Humane Society, where I knew my friend JoAnna would be volunteering. I'd originally thought that I might be able to come join her after our lunch/walk was complete, but when I realized I wouldn't have time before they closed at 4, I thought it would be good to stop by and tell her hi anyway.

After chatting for a few minutes with JoAnna we headed off to Jack's, but since it was less than a mile away and we needed 2 miles, we sort of took the long way. We walked through some neighborhoods, past an elementary school where I volunteered in college, past a preschool where I subbed in college, and then back around to the restaurant. When we arrived we'd walked just over 15 miles on the day and Mom hadn't had any problems at all! I was so proud of her, and we enjoyed a huge, yummy meal at Jack's to celebrate!!

The Biggest Weekend

This past weekend was the biggest weekend in the entire 3-Day 24 week training program. This was the weekend of the 18 and 15 miles back-to-back training walks--a weekend so big that there's even a special milestone sticker to commemorate it! These big walks are actually scheduled for this coming weekend, but since I have the KU homecoming game and a wedding to go to on Saturday, I knew there'd be no time for walking 18 miles!

So Mom and I swapped last weekend with this weekend, and took on the big one right after our grueling 17 mile walk last weekend. I wasn't so worried about the 18 on Saturday--I knew Mom would handle that just fine--but I was definitely worried about the subsequent 15 on Sunday. Mom has struggled a bit on the long Sunday walks, so I encouraged her to stay the night so that I could help motivate her the next day.

For a new and different place to walk on Saturday, Mom and I drove to the little town of Baldwin City, which is just about 20 minutes south of Lawrence. It took a while to get there because of fog, but we arrived at about 8:15, just before the town came alive for the annual Maple Leaf Festival. It was still really chilly outside, so we layered up and started walking around the town, coming back to the car every few miles for drinks and snacks. For our first pit stop we went to Kwik Shop, where we had to wait for at least 20 minutes to use the restroom because the place was so crowded with tourists!

Instead of going downtown for the parade, we decided to go against the foot traffic to head out to the edge of town, where we saw the old train depot and the antique train to nowhere. As we headed back towards the festival we stopped for a quick stretch, and we'd already knocked off 6-7 miles. Our goal was to walk 14 in Baldwin before heading back to Lawrence.

After walking around some residential areas and seeing the train we moved into the downtown, where we milled about the hundreds of booths of crafts and art. We walked through the old-fashioned carnival area and actually stopped at the petting zoo and petted some farm and exotic animals for a while too. It was all very entertaining! We walked around the Baker University campus for the first time--it was really pretty! After taking in the sights and dodging the crowds for a while, we headed towards the north end of town and walked around some really nice neighborhoods there and walked around the high school.

After one last trip back to the car, we headed back down to the festival and bought a few items that we'd seen in our first walk through. We would have gotten finished a lot sooner had we not spent so much time milling about the festival and dropping by local shops! We were still able to finish our 14 miles by about 2:30, at which point we headed back to Lawrence to watch the KU/OU game.

Mom did a lot of napping during the game, and after it was over (a mere 4 hours later) we headed back out for our last 4 miles. We took the dogs along this time, which always takes longer for all the sniffing and squatting and leg-lifting, but we managed to finish the day by about 8:30 or so. Mom didn't get tired necessarily, but she did have some weakness and lightheadedness that we think was probably due to minor dehydration. We didn't wear our fanny-packs around the festival during the day so we probably didn't drink nearly as much as we needed to!

Since our 18 mile walk took so much time to talk about, I'll save the 15 mile story for tomorrow!

Pack Jack's!!!

Yesterday we finalized the plans for the 3rd annual "Pack Jack's" fundraiser for the 3-Day! Our extremely generous friend Dan, the owner of Set'em Up Jack's on 23rd street here in Lawrence, has agreed to again donate 25% of every bill from the evening of October 23rd to our 3-Day team.

If you can join us next Thursday at Set'em Up Jack's, Mom and I would love to see you and would very much appreciate your support!! Click here to download the flier! We hope to see you at Jack's on the 23rd!!

An Amazing 17 Miles

It's Tuesday now, but I think I'm still tired from this weekend's walking! On Saturday morning, Mom came over from Topeka and we started our 17 mile journey, which we had to break up into parts. We walked the dogs almost 3.5 miles, dropped them off, and then headed back out for a much quicker 3.4 miles by ourselves. By 10 a.m., we were already finished with almost 7 miles of our walk and Mom hadn't even blinked.

There was a KU home game on Saturday, so I quickly showered up and got ready to go to the game with Chad while Mom relaxed and lounged around with the dogs. She actually dropped us off at the game so we wouldn't have to deal with parking, and while we cheered on the 'Hawks Mom did some reading at Borders coffee shop. It was pretty hot during the first half of the game, so I was a little worried that our last 10 miles would be a struggled because of the heat. Mom came back and picked us up after our victory (after I walked about a mile in flip flops!), and at home she decided to take a bit of a nap while Chad and I ate an early dinner/late lunch.

I let Mom sleep a little, partially because I thought she needed it, and partially because I was afraid it would be too hot for her after we'd gotten so hot at the game. However, when we headed back out on the journey at about 4:30, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We headed downtown, walked through a park, walked up the massively steep hill onto campus, passed one of my office buildings and the construction site of the future hotel, wound up another large hill beside the stadium, and wrapped all the way around campus until we came to the Union. The campus was so beautiful and was still filled with tailgaiting students who'd been at it the entire game day!

The Union stop was about five miles in, so we did a little relaxing and stretching before filling up with snacks and fluids and heading back out onto the trail. By the time we left the Union it was getting close to 7:00 and was starting to get dark. We wrapped back around the Campanile on Memorial Drive to the other end of campus, walked down through some neighborhoods of partying students near campus, headed back downtown, walked down New Hampshire to avoid the Saturday night crowds but still got some odd looks from people, and then started heading back west towards home. By this time it was pitch black outside, and Mom and I were both getting really tired! With about 2 miles left we slowed considerably, but we kept plugging along until we arrived back at home at around 8:30. Mom felt better about the fact that I was extremely exhausted too!

Needless to say, I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow Saturday night! My feet hurt terribly when I got out of bed Sunday morning, but I walked about another 6 or so miles that day. Mom got in several miles as well, despite being extremely sore. Hopefully our next long walk won't be such an exhausting all day event!!

Easy Weekend (Physically)

So last weekend our schedule had us only walking 8 miles and 6 miles on Saturday and Sunday respectively--sort of a recovery week after our 15/11 miles the weekend before. Mom was supposed to go to a friend's house near Manhattan, so she was going to try and get a few miles in here and there during her visit, since there wasn't very many miles to do anyway. Unfortunately, I never really got to ask Mom about her walking because a much more important issue came up on Saturday morning--her brother passed away unexpectedly. She zoomed passed Manhattan and onto Chapman to be with family, and has been there most of the week. I haven't asked her much about her walking, nor am I really worried about it. We're going to do our 17 miles this weekend and we'll just take it easy as we get back into the long miles.

On Saturday morning before I found out about my uncle, I took a 4 mile walk downtown, went to a yoga class, and then took the 4 mile walk back home. I kept a really fast pace on the way there, but on the way back, after 1.5 hours of yoga, I was pretty pooped! I struggled to keep my pace under 15 minutes per mile, but ended up with an overall 8 mile pace of about 14:40. Not too bad since we've not been walking nearly that fast during most of our training!

I'll admit that I didn't walk my full 6 miles on Sunday, which really isn't anything new since I've skipped a lot of my Sunday walks this year. I'm such a slacker! Hopefully I'll not struggle too much on days 2 and 3 in San Diego! :)

Two-Thirds

I was going to post a blog just a couple of nights ago about reaching the milestone of being half way done with my fundraising. Thanks to some mustard money from Chad's fundraising efforts, I received the official "congrats your half way there" email message from the 3-Day coaches last night. The crazy thing is, thanks to an ultra generous gift from Chad's Aunt Meg, today I'm actually over 2/3 of the way done with my fundraising!! This is a big relief, since I have a feeling I'll be helping the rest of my family raise their $2200 as well!

Thanks to everyone who has so generously and faithfully supported me in my efforts!!

15 Miles of Lovely Lake Shawnee

This morning Mom and I got up early to walk since it was unfortunately going to be hot again. We headed out to Lake Shawnee for our second walk there. This time I didn't forget the camera--I actually brought two of them! We got there just in time for a wonderful sunrise.


The weather was so cool and nice for the first few miles we couldn't have asked for better weather. We started on the opposite side of the lake this time and walked in the opposite direction, since last time we'd taken a wrong turn at the part of the loop where the sidewalk wasn't yet complete. This time we got about half way around the lake before taking about a half mile detour off the trail in order to get to a restroom. It turned out to be the perfect detour when it was all said and done because the lake loop was 7 miles, and our detour on each loop made it exactly 7.5!

After our first pit stop we continued past the camping area and then on past the golf course and back up and around to the botanical garden where we started. It wasn't even until the last couple of miles that the weather really started warming up. We got the first lap done in just over two hours and took a nice break to fill up on liquids and snacks. We didn't break for too long though, since the weather was heating up pretty quickly. I peeled off a layer, but unfortunately Mom didn't have a layer to peel.

We took off in the opposite direction of our first lap for a change of scenery. The heat immediately began to take it's toll. We walked around the golf course again, relishing any shade that came across our path. We slowed considerably because of the heat, so when we made it to our off path pit stop location, it was wonderful to drench our bandannas in cold water help keep us cool. We went over to a shady shelter nearby and had a nice rest in the shade with some more snacks before heading back out onto the trail.

It had gotten so hot by this time we ended up having to take a detour in the next mile over to the convenience store so that we could by some more water. We soaked our bandannas once again, filled up our water bottles and headed back out to finish the last 2+ miles. We walked back over the dam and in and out of the bends on the west side of the lake until we finally made it back to the car. That last mile or so was very hot and seemed very long!

We got a lot of good pictures on our two laps around the lake, which you can enjoy in the slideshow below. There is also a quick video at the end of a cute little bunch of Canada Geese.




After we finished walking, Mom relaxed in the shade for a while while I walked through the botanical garden and took TONS of pictures with my good camera. I haven't loaded those pictures onto the computer yet, but I'll definitely share them so you can get an idea of how gorgeous that area of the lake is!

Mom and I had a big lunch after our walk, and then I was pretty much wiped out for a couple of hours after arriving back home. It was over 85 degrees by the time we finished, and that heat definitely took it's toll. I was really proud of my mom for sticking it out all 15 miles!

Softball and Sunburn

Mom and I took our long training walk on Sunday this week since I had a wedding to go to on Saturday. We made plans to walk later in the day than we do normally, thinking that it wouldn't be any problem since the weather has been so beautiful lately. Unfortunately, Sunday ended up being the hottest day we had in weeks! Despite the less than ideal weather, we still walked about 14.5 miles when the day was over. We were really pooped!

Our walk was kind of a fun adventure because we had a particular destination in mind. We started from our house at around 11:00 or so, and we headed towards the softball diamonds on the southwest edge of town, where Chad had a game at 1:00. We stopped for a snack in the shade about 4 miles in, and then arrived at Clinton Lake Sports Complex at about 1:30. We cheered Chad's team to a victory for the league championship, and then relaxed with a few teammates for about hour in a shady spot of the parking lot. Chad brought us a refill on food and water, so after snacking and hydrating we headed back out towards home. As we left the softball diamonds I quickly realized that I had not prepared well that morning--I hadn't put any sunscreen on my arms at all and was wearing a sleeveless shirt!

Thankfully, on the way home we got a little bit of cloud cover to help with the heat, and we made another pit stop at Kwik Shop when we were almost halfway back to our house. We had another nice picnic of energy bars and Gatorade, and then we took off for the last 4 mile leg of our journey. We arrived home at exactly 6:00 p.m., a mere 7 hours after we left home! Fortunately, only 4.5 of those hours were actually spent walking!

Chad greeted us with a lovely dinner, which was fortunate since we were both famished and exhausted! The heat was especially draining, but Mom handled the walk like a champ! I, on the other hand, ended up with a ridiculous sunburn! :)