3-Day For The Cure: Atlanta Camp News

I got an email yesterday from the organizers of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure informing me that the 3-Day camp in Atlanta in October will be indoors. The entire camp experience will be inside, warm, and dry:

In the past, some Atlanta 3-Day for the Cure participants have braved chilly or wet weather while walking towards our goal of a future without breast cancer.

This year, in order to help ensure you have a great experience no matter the weather, we’ll be setting up the Atlanta 3-Day for the Cure campsite indoors. It will have all of the features of an outdoor camp, including the tents and that indomitable 3-Day spirit, but will help you rest warmly during your 3-Day journey.

This caused a lot of talk among those of us who are registered to walk or crew. People wondered why we'd need to camp indoors. People wondered if the indoors experience would hearken back to prior 3-Day walks in some cities where extreme inclement weather -- heavy rain, cold, lightning, that kind of thing -- caused camp to shift partially indoors.

There's a term you hear on the 3-Day: "Relo". A "relo" (relocation) is what they term it when horrible weather causes the 3-Day staff to load up buses with all the walkers and crew and take them to an office complex, or school, or even an enclosed parking structure, to sleep in safety. The main problem with a relo, and the biggest reason most people hate it, is that the rest of camp doesn't come with you. The dining tent stays where it is. The shower trucks stay where they are. And so on. You're literally sleeping in a sleeping bag on a mattress pad (if you brought one) in a classroom or hallway or whatever. You take a bus from camp to the relo site, waiting potentially quite some time for it to be your turn to get onboard, and in the morning, to get a shower and breakfast, you take a bus back. And there's not much privacy. And if someone gets up to go to the bathroom at night, well, light spills in from the hallway. You don't get much sleep.

No one likes a relo. And there's always one or two or three cities each year where a relo takes place. It may not be for both Friday and Saturday night. It might just be for one. But in the end, it's an attempt to make the best of a bad situation.

People who have never walked a 3-Day might be wondering at this point why we camp at all if this sort of thing could happen. Why not just put everyone up in hotels? Others might be wondering "if the forecast for a particular weekend is really, really bad, why not just reschedule for the next weekend?" Still others might ask "Why hold walks in October and November when the weather might be bad?"

Having everyone stay in hotels would really increase the cost to participants. Participants pay a $90 fee to cover their meals and the victory t-shirt they get at the end. If it was expected that everyone would stay in various local hotels on Friday and Saturday night, at possibly $200 a night or more, that would price the event right out of everyone's price range. Participation would plummet. The logistics would be crazy as well: imagine trying to shuttle everyone to the right hotel on Friday evening, back again on Saturday morning, back again on Saturday evening, back again on Sunday morning. Camping allows an inexpensive alternative and it's actually a lot of fun. So we camp.

And as for rescheduling -- I was present for the 2009 Philadelphia 3-Day where two nor'easter storms came through southeastern Pennsylvania on the same weekend. The camp site was a sea of mud a foot deep and there was literally no way to hold camp (not even if the campers all stayed in a school; remember, during a relo campers are shuttled back to camp for showers and meals). The original campsite was absolutely impassable. Walkers were tremendously upset when the news came out that the 3-Day would cover hotel costs for everyone for Friday and Saturday and that the walk would be a one-day event that Sunday. People wanted to know why the 3-Day staff hadn't rescheduled. People said "They knew about this forecast WEEKS ago." Um, no, they didn't. And even if they had -- the next weekend was not an option because another city's 3-Day was scheduled then. And the participants had made travel and vacation plans. People flying in from all over the country can't just switch and come in a week later.

And finally: the weather can be bad any week of the year. I've never been to a Boston 3-Day in July where it didn't rain hard at some point. Certain cities' walks take place in the fall due to permitting issues or because other major events have other weekends spoken for. You don't want to have six major charity walks and marathons and so on all trying to cross through the same center city at the same time on the same day. Even two at the same time can be awkward: I was present at the 2008 Washington, DC 3-Day where the Army Marathon conflicted with the walk and we didn't get to go near any of the cool stuff downtown, and the 2009 DC 3-Day had some difficulties near the White House when the walkers had to be routed around a major gay/lesbian rights march. You take the weekend you can get.

So let's circle back to the idea of an "indoors camp". After the 2009 Philly mess, the organizers decided that in 2010 that camp would be indoors. No ifs, ands, or buts. From the word "go" it would be an indoors camp with none of the frustrations and annoyances of a last-minute relo.

From what I've heard, the end result was everything you'd have wished for. I wasn't present at the Philadelphia 2010 walk -- I did DC and Twin Cities and Tampa Bay instead that year. But the word online was that people had a great time. Everyone camped at the Philadelphia Convention Center. The tents were set up in rows on the convention center floor. The shower trucks and meals were all right there onsite. Instead of portojons, people had access to actual bathrooms. The 3-Day "Main Street" was still there. Just under a big overarching convention center roof. I have lots of friends and acquaintances who did Philadelphia last year and they had a great time camping indoors... even though the weather outdoors turned out to be pretty good.

I have absolutely no idea how much it cost to rent the Philadelphia Convention Center for a weekend. I hope the 3-Day got a charitable organization rate, but I don't know. And I very much doubt that we'll see things change so that every one of the 14 3-Day cities has an indoors camp. But in those cities that have, historically, been prone to chilly and rainy fall weather, it's probably something the organizers are looking at. Planning ahead, we can have a well-run, safe, comfortable indoors experience with no last-minute "gotcha".

And that's what we're looking at in Atlanta this fall. Not a crazy, miserable, rotten last-minute "relo"... we're going to have the full camp experience, everything you've heard about. We'll have the remembrance tents. We'll have the 3-Day cafe and Main Street. We'll have dining right there at camp. And most importantly, we'll still have thousands of pink tents, all lined up in rows.

So yes: last-minute relos are absolutely awful. The organizers of the 3-Day know that. And I know there will still be occasional relos in the future... but I applaud the organizers for planning ahead and trying to do everything feasible to ensure a comfortable, enjoyable, positive camping experience for all participants.

3-Day For The Cure: But It's A Dry Heat!

Thank you very much, Mister I-Honk-At-People-Doing-Stretches-By-The-Side-Of-The-Road. You were the only thing that kept my training walk tonight in Tucson, Arizona from being perfect.

I live in northern New England. I train for 3-Day training walks in the hills and valleys and mountains of Vermont. Training in the dry heat of the Sonoran Desert is definitely a different experience for me. I'm here on business for a couple of days and could have just relaxed in the hotel pool with a margarita after work, but no sooner had I gotten back to my hotel than I threw on my heart rate monitor/GPS doodad, grabbed my trusty pink Nalgene bottle and my sunglasses, and headed out for what turned into an eight mile training walk.

In, I might add, 95-degree heat and 4% humidity.

Yeah, it's a DRY HEAT. I know. I know.

A dry heat may not feel as hot as a nice humid muggy Dixie heatwave beatdown like the summer days I endured as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia. I remember all too well the 100-degree heat with 100% humidity. Walking around was like going for a steam bath fully clothed. Trying to sleep in an a dorm room that utterly lacked air conditioning was next to impossible. Yeah, I know "muggy".

But even though tonight's training walk brought cries of "I'll trade ya!" from numerous friends, walking in really hot, dry conditions can be downright dangerous. You're still sweating but the sweat's evaporating away. So you don't feel sweaty, but over time you wind up crusted with salt. I wonder where all that salt came from? That's right, inside you. And if you're just toddling along drinking water, that salt's not getting replaced.

That's if you're drinking at all; paradoxically, on really hot dry days some people just don't feel thirsty. By the time you realize how dehydrated your body really is and how much salt and liquid you've lost, you're already feeling dizzy and simply chugging a bottle of water won't help. You've got to be proactive.

So I made sure tonight to drink plenty of water AND sport drink -- PowerAde, specifically -- as I walked. I drained a 1-liter bottle of water twice AND drank two quarts of PowerAde. Slightly more than a gallon of liquid, all in all -- but I'm going to keep drinking until bedtime. Healthy liquids, that is. Not margaritas. :)

3-Day For The Cure: But It's A Dry Heat!

Thank you very much, Mister I-Honk-At-People-Doing-Stretches-By-The-Side-Of-The-Road. You were the only thing that kept my training walk tonight in Tucson, Arizona from being perfect.

I live in northern New England. I train for 3-Day training walks in the hills and valleys and mountains of Vermont. Training in the dry heat of the Sonoran Desert is definitely a different experience for me. I'm here on business for a couple of days and could have just relaxed in the hotel pool with a margarita after work, but no sooner had I gotten back to my hotel than I threw on my heart rate monitor/GPS doodad, grabbed my trusty pink Nalgene bottle and my sunglasses, and headed out for what turned into an eight mile training walk.

In, I might add, 95-degree heat and 4% humidity.

Yeah, it's a DRY HEAT. I know. I know.

A dry heat may not feel as hot as a nice humid muggy Dixie heatwave beatdown like the summer days I endured as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia. I remember all too well the 100-degree heat with 100% humidity. Walking around was like going for a steam bath fully clothed. Trying to sleep in an a dorm room that utterly lacked air conditioning was next to impossible. Yeah, I know "muggy".

But even though tonight's training walk brought cries of "I'll trade ya!" from numerous friends, walking in really hot, dry conditions can be downright dangerous. You're still sweating but the sweat's evaporating away. So you don't feel sweaty, but over time you wind up crusted with salt. I wonder where all that salt came from? That's right, inside you. And if you're just toddling along drinking water, that salt's not getting replaced.

That's if you're drinking at all; paradoxically, on really hot dry days some people just don't feel thirsty. By the time you realize how dehydrated your body really is and how much salt and liquid you've lost, you're already feeling dizzy and simply chugging a bottle of water won't help. You've got to be proactive.

So I made sure tonight to drink plenty of water AND sport drink -- PowerAde, specifically -- as I walked. I drained a 1-liter bottle of water twice AND drank two quarts of PowerAde. Slightly more than a gallon of liquid, all in all -- but I'm going to keep drinking until bedtime. Healthy liquids, that is. Not margaritas. :)