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It's June 1. For some of you, that's not a special date at all. It's just the start of June. But for me, and for thousands of people like me, it has a very special meaning: June 1 means that the "3-Day season" is really getting into full swing. Kicking into high gear. Moving to the launch pad.
When you sign up to walk in a 3-Day walk -- a sixty mile walk spread out over three days -- to raise funds for breast cancer, it seems at times that there's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.
You experience periodic bursts of enthusiasm as you reach various fundraising and training goals. Just did your first 10-mile training walk? Yay! Just reached $500 in fundraising? Yay! Just got to your halfway point ($1150)? YAY!
There's a lot of excitement when online check-in for the walk opens, allowing you to:
It's really cool when you get the word that "travel information for the 3-Day" has been posted. That's the big day when the location of opening and closing ceremonies is published and the 3-Day website announces which hotels will be running shuttles to opening. Everyone runs to get a room at one of those hotels -- six, eight to a room, sometimes -- so they can get that shuttle to opening and not have to worry about finding some member of their family to come drop them off at 5:30 in the morning.
But between all those little "yay!" moments there's a lot of ... real life. There're those days that you say "I'll go for a training walk tomorrow." And then you don't.
Well, when June 1 rolls around each year things kick into higher gear. People who haven't been doing their training suddenly go "uh oh" and suddenly start making appearances at their local park in the evenings and on the weekends. People who haven't been doing their fundraising find themselves taking long, thoughtful looks at the contents of their basements and contemplating what each item would bring at a yard sale. People who never bake, ever, find themselves rolling out dough and using that pink ribbon-shaped cookie cutter and wondering if they can get $5 a cookie from the folks at work. It's a busy time.
I've been actively preparing for the three 2011 3-Day walks that I'm taking part in for months now. I listed training walks at our local mall as far back as March. I started fundraising in January. But I had to wait for all the snow to melt here in Vermont before I could get really busy -- and now that it has, God's blessed us with, um, torrential rains -- twice what we normally get. And flooding. But we do what we can. I've been following the Boston training schedule even though I'm serving as crew for Boston; I'm not actually taking part as a walker until September in San Francisco and October in Atlanta. Each Saturday I've been doing longer and longer walks -- last weekend we did 14 miles, this coming weekend we're doing almost 17 ... and next weekend we're doing 19. It's all part of hardening and toughening yourself up so you can do twenty miles three days running.
But now that June has finally come -- and the Boston walk is only 52 days away -- I'm going to step things up even more. I'm going to significantly increase my walking, rain or shine or oobleck. I'm going to try to step up my fundraising work now that the events I'm taking part in are right around the corner and not months and months away. And I'm going to write at least one blog entry a day about the 3-Day and what it's like to be involved and what you have to do to get ready for it.
Don't know much about the 3-Day, distance walking, and what it's like to be part of the craziest, most enjoyable, and most inspiring charitable event around? Stay tuned.
When you sign up to walk in a 3-Day walk -- a sixty mile walk spread out over three days -- to raise funds for breast cancer, it seems at times that there's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.
You experience periodic bursts of enthusiasm as you reach various fundraising and training goals. Just did your first 10-mile training walk? Yay! Just reached $500 in fundraising? Yay! Just got to your halfway point ($1150)? YAY!
There's a lot of excitement when online check-in for the walk opens, allowing you to:
- fill out your tenting preferences (stay in camp, or leave each night for a hotel and miss all the 3 a.m. trips to the portojons)
- state your dining preferences (regular, vegetarian, or organic high-neutron raw vegan macrobiotic)
- indicate whether or not you want to pay for fresh towels twice a day during the walk or bring your own (fresh towels are worth the $12 for the whole weekend, trust me)
It's really cool when you get the word that "travel information for the 3-Day" has been posted. That's the big day when the location of opening and closing ceremonies is published and the 3-Day website announces which hotels will be running shuttles to opening. Everyone runs to get a room at one of those hotels -- six, eight to a room, sometimes -- so they can get that shuttle to opening and not have to worry about finding some member of their family to come drop them off at 5:30 in the morning.
But between all those little "yay!" moments there's a lot of ... real life. There're those days that you say "I'll go for a training walk tomorrow." And then you don't.
Well, when June 1 rolls around each year things kick into higher gear. People who haven't been doing their training suddenly go "uh oh" and suddenly start making appearances at their local park in the evenings and on the weekends. People who haven't been doing their fundraising find themselves taking long, thoughtful looks at the contents of their basements and contemplating what each item would bring at a yard sale. People who never bake, ever, find themselves rolling out dough and using that pink ribbon-shaped cookie cutter and wondering if they can get $5 a cookie from the folks at work. It's a busy time.
I've been actively preparing for the three 2011 3-Day walks that I'm taking part in for months now. I listed training walks at our local mall as far back as March. I started fundraising in January. But I had to wait for all the snow to melt here in Vermont before I could get really busy -- and now that it has, God's blessed us with, um, torrential rains -- twice what we normally get. And flooding. But we do what we can. I've been following the Boston training schedule even though I'm serving as crew for Boston; I'm not actually taking part as a walker until September in San Francisco and October in Atlanta. Each Saturday I've been doing longer and longer walks -- last weekend we did 14 miles, this coming weekend we're doing almost 17 ... and next weekend we're doing 19. It's all part of hardening and toughening yourself up so you can do twenty miles three days running.
But now that June has finally come -- and the Boston walk is only 52 days away -- I'm going to step things up even more. I'm going to significantly increase my walking, rain or shine or oobleck. I'm going to try to step up my fundraising work now that the events I'm taking part in are right around the corner and not months and months away. And I'm going to write at least one blog entry a day about the 3-Day and what it's like to be involved and what you have to do to get ready for it.
Don't know much about the 3-Day, distance walking, and what it's like to be part of the craziest, most enjoyable, and most inspiring charitable event around? Stay tuned.
