3-Day For The Cure: Delivering On Your Commitment

So you've signed up to walk in your first Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. You know this involves walking sixty miles in three days, pounding your way over asphalt and concrete and dirt, twenty numbing miles a day, all in the name of raising funds for the fight against breast cancer.

Or perhaps the reason you walk is not really about the money; perhaps it's about your mother, sister, aunt, cousin, or friend, who fought breast cancer and won ... or lost. So you walk in her honor or her memory.

Or perhaps it's because you have breast cancer... or you're a survivor, determined to show the world that despite losing your hair and your sense of taste, despite battling through "chemo brain", you're tough and determined and capable of doing something really, totally gutsy and amazing.

It doesn't matter why you walk. All the reasons listed above are valid. They're all good.

There are really very few bad reasons to walk the 3-Day. Maybe you're doing it because you said one day "That sounds like a real challenge. I'd like to try that some day" and a snotty co-worker said "Yeah, right. Like you could ever walk sixty miles in three days."

But regardless of your reason for walking, there's an implied contract between you and each person you ask to donate: if they donate on your behalf to Susan G. Komen For The Cure, you will walk sixty miles in three days. Or you'll sure as hell try.

So how do you deliver on that commitment?



The simple answer is: do the training.

I can't emphasize that enough. Every year when I walk the 3-Day (and I've walked five and crewed two so far, and am doing three more this year), there are people who drop out partway through and spend the rest of the weekend taking sweep vans from pit stop to pit stop. Ask them what happened, and they smile in an embarrassed kind of way and say "I didn't do much training."

Please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way. I know that a lot of 3-Day walkers have babies or little kids. I know that a lot of walkers have jobs that don't give them a lot of free time in the evenings to walk. I know that some of us live in rural parts of the world where there simply aren't sidewalks and businesses with bathrooms every couple of miles. I know that it's not necessarily easy to train.

But you've GOT TO TRAIN.

Even if you're a marathon runner. Famous last words: "I've run a marathon or two each year for the past five years -- I didn't figure that I really needed to train for a long walk." I heard that from a woman who had such blistered feet and such bad leg cramps that she was unable to keep walking; she had to catch a sag bus to camp. She couldn't understand what went wrong -- but experienced walkers know the answer: walking is not the same as running. Walking involves a different stride. The pace is different. The wear and tear on your body is different. It's surprisingly hard to walk sixty miles no matter how much you run.

I don't want you to spend your 3-Day riding sweep vans. I definitely don't want you sitting in a medical tent, waiting to hear the dreaded words: "stress fracture". Proper training will definitely cut the odds of anything like that happening.

So here are some real, time-tested training tips from someone who has personally made a mistake or three.

Train in the conditions you'll be walking in

I've walked, as I said above, five 3-Days. I had horribly blistered feet on my first 3-Day because I didn't train in the conditions I'd be walking in.

I live in rural Vermont. I have access to some of the world's best hiking trails. In fact, I live a half mile from a trailhead to Vermont's legendary Long Trail. When I registered for my first 3-Day in 2008, I figured hiking steep mountain footpaths had to be as least as good as just moseying along local streets. I spent my summer weekends wearing boots tromping my way up and down mountains. And then I was so blistered by lunch on Day 1 of the '08 Washington, DC 3-Day that I spent half my lunch break merrily putting pieces of padded moleskin and Band-Aids all over my toes and heels. By the end, I had huge, painful blisters across the backs of both heels. And I wound up losing the toenail from one of my big toes -- a nail that didn't grow back until the next spring.

Asphalt and concrete are harder than dirt. You may have a lovely dirt-and-gravel recreation path near your house. I'm happy for you. DON'T TRAIN ON IT EXCLUSIVELY. Get out on the sidewalks and shoulders of your town and put in some serious miles.

And don't train in boots. Boots are great for traction on steep trails, but they don't provide the cushioning that you need for a sixty-mile walk on pavement. Train in running shoes. Even if you're not a runner, running shoes do an excellent job absorbing the repetitive pound-pound-pound of distance walking. And then wear the shoes on the 3-Day. Don't switch to a different pair at the last minute; you'll be unused to them and the way they rub your feet: instant blisters. If you do need to break in a new pair, do so several weeks before the event.

Go the distance

A second mistake that a lot of new walkers make is that they simply don't train for the distances involved. They walk five or six miles four days a week and figure that'll get them ready for three 20-mile walks.

*BZZT*.

No.

Your feet will not callous up and your muscles and hips won't toughen up if you simply walk 90 minutes a day four times a week. It may be a bit boring, especially if you don't have anyone to train with in your area, spending the better part of your Saturday walking 15 miles, but it's necessary.

I've walked five 3-Days ... and never had to get on a sweep van. In '08, I did have bad blisters, but my muscles and hips were in fine shape. Why? I may have trained on the wrong terrain, but I certainly put in the miles.

How do you know how many miles you should be walking?

Easy. Each week the 3-Day site mails out a recommended training schedule for the week. It starts either 24 or 16 weeks before your scheduled event (depending on how soon you want to get started) and begins with light walking, only a few miles at a time. But progressively, each week, the distances get longer and longer until finally, 5 weeks before your scheduled 3-Day, they have you do the legendary "18-15". That means you do 18 miles one weekend day and turn right around and do 15 the next. Then you ramp it down just a bit for the next couple of weeks to give your body time to recover... and then you walk for real.

Not getting your training schedules in your inbox? If you're a registered 3-Day walker, you can see them here. If you want to start getting them in your email, there's a link right on that page that will let you opt in. And if you'd prefer to retrieve them off the website, just bookmark that link and consult it each week. You can also see the complete, 24-week or 16-week training master schedule here.

You'll note that the schedule calls for walking short to moderate distances on Tuesdays and Thursdays and much longer distances on Saturdays and Sundays. Can't spare two weekend days to do long walks? At the very least, do the Saturday distance. If Sunday has to be shorter, well, so be it. But always make sure to get in one mid-week walk and then do the full Saturday distance.

And don't be a six-miles-a-day-is-my-maximum person. The 3-Day is not a 3-Day, 18-mile walk. So why would you train as though it was?

Train with others

God willing, you've never had to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. But if you have, or someone you care about has, you know why people go: difficult, life-changing ordeals are easier with the support of others.

The 3-Day is a lot like AA in many respects. It's about acceptance, support, caring, encouragement, and reinforcement. People who miss an AA meeting know that their sponsor will worry and call them up to see if everything's okay. Miss a 3-Day training walk? The people you train with will worry. And you don't want them to worry, right? So you go.



When you're training for the 3-Day, it's much easier to motivate yourself to get out the door and head out to train if you know your training buddies are waiting for you at the park. It's easier to keep going when you have people you like to talk to, people who are human just like you.

In some parts of the USA, it's easy to find training buddies. I live in rural Vermont and I'm deeply envious of my friends in the Tampa area who have twenty or more people show up for a routine training walk. I lead training walks in Vermont and I'm overjoyed if we get a total of four people. That's life in moose and maple country. So I make the best of it. I stop periodically on training walks and use my cell phone to check in on Twitter and see how friends who are training in the hometowns, a thousand miles away, are doing. We encourage one another even though we may be on opposite sides of the country. Hey, it's better than nothing.

And at the end of my walk, I check in on Daily Mile -- I upload my track from the little GPS/heart rate monitor doodad I wear and track my mileage and I look at what my buddies have done.

But if you do live in an urban area, there're bound to be lots of other registered walkers around to walk with. You can look them up on the 3-Day "Share List" It lists all the registered walkers and crew within a certain distance of a given zip code, complete with email addresses. Regrettably, not everyone chooses to be listed on the Share List, which means that you might have five walkers residing within a few miles of you and yet, you'd think you were all alone. To read more about the Share List and how you can use it and make sure you're listed, see my blog entry from March 2.

Also, try looking at the training walk calendar for your area. It's another link on the 3-Day website that lists the training walks published by fellow walkers who have agreed to be official training walk leaders. If you don't see a lot of walks in your area, it may still be early -- walks are more common as the event draws closer -- or it may simply be that you live in an area without a lot of registered training walk leaders.

If that happens, you can always organize your own walks using the Share List -- and if that doesn't work, remember, you can always fall back on your Twitter friends if you use Twitter or your Facebook friends if you use Facebook. I'm @jay3day on Twitter and jaythreeday on Facebook. Hunt me up. I'll be happy to egg you on.

In conclusion

I could go on and on about tips and tricks to make your training successful. I could talk about the benefits of various types of sport drinks like Gatorade and Powerade. I could recommend various types of technical clothing and backpacks. And in fact, I probably will at some point. But the most important things are, in my opinion, the three key points I cited above:

• Train in the conditions you'll be walking in. Train on concrete asphalt in running shoes. Don't do all your training on unpaved rec paths in your local park.
• Go the distance -- walk increasingly longer walks until you're coming close to doing twenty miles each Saturday.
• Find people to walk with -- it's easier to keep going if you have people to encourage you and to provide encouragement for in turn.

I want you to be successful when you walk the 3-Day. And I know that you want to fulfill the commitment you made to your donors. They donated to help find a cure for breast cancer because you showed, with your promise to walk sixty miles, how much you care. Now it's time to start putting in the preparation that will make that promise a reality.

See you on the road!

3-Day For The Cure: Delivering On Your Commitment

So you've signed up to walk in your first Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. You know this involves walking sixty miles in three days, pounding your way over asphalt and concrete and dirt, twenty numbing miles a day, all in the name of raising funds for the fight against breast cancer.

Or perhaps the reason you walk is not really about the money; perhaps it's about your mother, sister, aunt, cousin, or friend, who fought breast cancer and won ... or lost. So you walk in her honor or her memory.

Or perhaps it's because you have breast cancer... or you're a survivor, determined to show the world that despite losing your hair and your sense of taste, despite battling through "chemo brain", you're tough and determined and capable of doing something really, totally gutsy and amazing.

It doesn't matter why you walk. All the reasons listed above are valid. They're all good.

There are really very few bad reasons to walk the 3-Day. Maybe you're doing it because you said one day "That sounds like a real challenge. I'd like to try that some day" and a snotty co-worker said "Yeah, right. Like you could ever walk sixty miles in three days."

But regardless of your reason for walking, there's an implied contract between you and each person you ask to donate: if they donate on your behalf to Susan G. Komen For The Cure, you will walk sixty miles in three days. Or you'll sure as hell try.

So how do you deliver on that commitment?



The simple answer is: do the training.

I can't emphasize that enough. Every year when I walk the 3-Day (and I've walked five and crewed two so far, and am doing three more this year), there are people who drop out partway through and spend the rest of the weekend taking sweep vans from pit stop to pit stop. Ask them what happened, and they smile in an embarrassed kind of way and say "I didn't do much training."

Please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way. I know that a lot of 3-Day walkers have babies or little kids. I know that a lot of walkers have jobs that don't give them a lot of free time in the evenings to walk. I know that some of us live in rural parts of the world where there simply aren't sidewalks and businesses with bathrooms every couple of miles. I know that it's not necessarily easy to train.

But you've GOT TO TRAIN.

Even if you're a marathon runner. Famous last words: "I've run a marathon or two each year for the past five years -- I didn't figure that I really needed to train for a long walk." I heard that from a woman who had such blistered feet and such bad leg cramps that she was unable to keep walking; she had to catch a sag bus to camp. She couldn't understand what went wrong -- but experienced walkers know the answer: walking is not the same as running. Walking involves a different stride. The pace is different. The wear and tear on your body is different. It's surprisingly hard to walk sixty miles no matter how much you run.

I don't want you to spend your 3-Day riding sweep vans. I definitely don't want you sitting in a medical tent, waiting to hear the dreaded words: "stress fracture". Proper training will definitely cut the odds of anything like that happening.

So here are some real, time-tested training tips from someone who has personally made a mistake or three.

Train in the conditions you'll be walking in

I've walked, as I said above, five 3-Days. I had horribly blistered feet on my first 3-Day because I didn't train in the conditions I'd be walking in.

I live in rural Vermont. I have access to some of the world's best hiking trails. In fact, I live a half mile from a trailhead to Vermont's legendary Long Trail. When I registered for my first 3-Day in 2008, I figured hiking steep mountain footpaths had to be as least as good as just moseying along local streets. I spent my summer weekends wearing boots tromping my way up and down mountains. And then I was so blistered by lunch on Day 1 of the '08 Washington, DC 3-Day that I spent half my lunch break merrily putting pieces of padded moleskin and Band-Aids all over my toes and heels. By the end, I had huge, painful blisters across the backs of both heels. And I wound up losing the toenail from one of my big toes -- a nail that didn't grow back until the next spring.

Asphalt and concrete are harder than dirt. You may have a lovely dirt-and-gravel recreation path near your house. I'm happy for you. DON'T TRAIN ON IT EXCLUSIVELY. Get out on the sidewalks and shoulders of your town and put in some serious miles.

And don't train in boots. Boots are great for traction on steep trails, but they don't provide the cushioning that you need for a sixty-mile walk on pavement. Train in running shoes. Even if you're not a runner, running shoes do an excellent job absorbing the repetitive pound-pound-pound of distance walking. And then wear the shoes on the 3-Day. Don't switch to a different pair at the last minute; you'll be unused to them and the way they rub your feet: instant blisters. If you do need to break in a new pair, do so several weeks before the event.

Go the distance

A second mistake that a lot of new walkers make is that they simply don't train for the distances involved. They walk five or six miles four days a week and figure that'll get them ready for three 20-mile walks.

*BZZT*.

No.

Your feet will not callous up and your muscles and hips won't toughen up if you simply walk 90 minutes a day four times a week. It may be a bit boring, especially if you don't have anyone to train with in your area, spending the better part of your Saturday walking 15 miles, but it's necessary.

I've walked five 3-Days ... and never had to get on a sweep van. In '08, I did have bad blisters, but my muscles and hips were in fine shape. Why? I may have trained on the wrong terrain, but I certainly put in the miles.

How do you know how many miles you should be walking?

Easy. Each week the 3-Day site mails out a recommended training schedule for the week. It starts either 24 or 16 weeks before your scheduled event (depending on how soon you want to get started) and begins with light walking, only a few miles at a time. But progressively, each week, the distances get longer and longer until finally, 5 weeks before your scheduled 3-Day, they have you do the legendary "18-15". That means you do 18 miles one weekend day and turn right around and do 15 the next. Then you ramp it down just a bit for the next couple of weeks to give your body time to recover... and then you walk for real.

Not getting your training schedules in your inbox? If you're a registered 3-Day walker, you can see them here. If you want to start getting them in your email, there's a link right on that page that will let you opt in. And if you'd prefer to retrieve them off the website, just bookmark that link and consult it each week. You can also see the complete, 24-week or 16-week training master schedule here.

You'll note that the schedule calls for walking short to moderate distances on Tuesdays and Thursdays and much longer distances on Saturdays and Sundays. Can't spare two weekend days to do long walks? At the very least, do the Saturday distance. If Sunday has to be shorter, well, so be it. But always make sure to get in one mid-week walk and then do the full Saturday distance.

And don't be a six-miles-a-day-is-my-maximum person. The 3-Day is not a 3-Day, 18-mile walk. So why would you train as though it was?

Train with others

God willing, you've never had to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. But if you have, or someone you care about has, you know why people go: difficult, life-changing ordeals are easier with the support of others.

The 3-Day is a lot like AA in many respects. It's about acceptance, support, caring, encouragement, and reinforcement. People who miss an AA meeting know that their sponsor will worry and call them up to see if everything's okay. Miss a 3-Day training walk? The people you train with will worry. And you don't want them to worry, right? So you go.



When you're training for the 3-Day, it's much easier to motivate yourself to get out the door and head out to train if you know your training buddies are waiting for you at the park. It's easier to keep going when you have people you like to talk to, people who are human just like you.

In some parts of the USA, it's easy to find training buddies. I live in rural Vermont and I'm deeply envious of my friends in the Tampa area who have twenty or more people show up for a routine training walk. I lead training walks in Vermont and I'm overjoyed if we get a total of four people. That's life in moose and maple country. So I make the best of it. I stop periodically on training walks and use my cell phone to check in on Twitter and see how friends who are training in the hometowns, a thousand miles away, are doing. We encourage one another even though we may be on opposite sides of the country. Hey, it's better than nothing.

And at the end of my walk, I check in on Daily Mile -- I upload my track from the little GPS/heart rate monitor doodad I wear and track my mileage and I look at what my buddies have done.

But if you do live in an urban area, there're bound to be lots of other registered walkers around to walk with. You can look them up on the 3-Day "Share List" It lists all the registered walkers and crew within a certain distance of a given zip code, complete with email addresses. Regrettably, not everyone chooses to be listed on the Share List, which means that you might have five walkers residing within a few miles of you and yet, you'd think you were all alone. To read more about the Share List and how you can use it and make sure you're listed, see my blog entry from March 2.

Also, try looking at the training walk calendar for your area. It's another link on the 3-Day website that lists the training walks published by fellow walkers who have agreed to be official training walk leaders. If you don't see a lot of walks in your area, it may still be early -- walks are more common as the event draws closer -- or it may simply be that you live in an area without a lot of registered training walk leaders.

If that happens, you can always organize your own walks using the Share List -- and if that doesn't work, remember, you can always fall back on your Twitter friends if you use Twitter or your Facebook friends if you use Facebook. I'm @jay3day on Twitter and jaythreeday on Facebook. Hunt me up. I'll be happy to egg you on.

In conclusion

I could go on and on about tips and tricks to make your training successful. I could talk about the benefits of various types of sport drinks like Gatorade and Powerade. I could recommend various types of technical clothing and backpacks. And in fact, I probably will at some point. But the most important things are, in my opinion, the three key points I cited above:

• Train in the conditions you'll be walking in. Train on concrete asphalt in running shoes. Don't do all your training on unpaved rec paths in your local park.
• Go the distance -- walk increasingly longer walks until you're coming close to doing twenty miles each Saturday.
• Find people to walk with -- it's easier to keep going if you have people to encourage you and to provide encouragement for in turn.

I want you to be successful when you walk the 3-Day. And I know that you want to fulfill the commitment you made to your donors. They donated to help find a cure for breast cancer because you showed, with your promise to walk sixty miles, how much you care. Now it's time to start putting in the preparation that will make that promise a reality.

See you on the road!