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jayfurrIt's Monday, October 4, 2010... and that means that there are just four more days until the 2010 Washington, DC Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure.
I'll be honest: my thoughts right now are not really focused on walking sixty miles through the streets of the District of Columbia and Maryland. Instead, I'm thinking more in terms of: "I need more hot tea. Wonder if it's too soon to take another cold capsule. Boy, I feel achy. Guess I should take some ibuprofen."
Yeah. I've got a bad cold.
I woke up at o'dark thirty yesterday morning to catch a flight to DC for work, conveniently -- had a class to lead on site at a customer in Maryland Tuesday through Thursday. I was pleased when I was able to work it out that rather than being on the far side of the country the day before the DC 3-Day, I'll be only a dozen miles away from opening. But I was rather less pleased when, upon waking yesterday, I realized I felt stuffy and achy and awful. I slept all the way here on the plane and was only somewhat functional as I drove north from Washington National Airport to my hotel here in Silver Spring. I slept most of the rest of the day Sunday and through the night, waking periodically to take ibuprofen and drink water, and this morning, if anything, I felt worse. That necessitated my canceling a one-day distance-learning class for internal staff at my company that I was to have led, but I just felt too rotten. I needed to do whatever I could to be in shape for the paying customers here in Maryland tomorrow, and that meant getting as much rest and healthy liquid as possible. After sleeping all day, I feel almost human. I went out and bought soup and hot tea and teabags and juice and some cold capsules and I'm dressed and sitting at the desk in my room, trying to get as much liquid on board as I can.
I had a similar nasty cold for a couple of days last week, a cold which knocked me out for Monday and Tuesday but was mostly gone by Wednesday. I am praying that this one will work its course in similar fashion, because, c'mon, I really don't want to have to make a choice between being healthy enough to work next week and walking the DC 3-Day this weekend.
But on the "plus" side of things, I wasn't planning on setting any land speed records this weekend.
As I've said in previous blog entries, I speed-walked the Twin Cities 3-Day back in August, finishing fifth the first day, 19th the second day, and 9th the third day. This was due to a combination of guilty thoughts (i.e., "I'm not doing all I can. MUST ... WALK... FASTER...") and exhilaration at having trained so well that the walk was almost effortless for me. I didn't have a single blister at the end of the 60+ miles. I had a toenail I was worried about losing, but it's still attached. Yay me.
So my plan for DC is to do the exact opposite. Rather than finding out how fast I can go on the route without actually running, I now intend to see how slow I can go on the route without getting swept.
For those of you who've never walked a 3-Day, we have this system where walkers who need a lift to the next pit stop or to lunch or to camp can signal a passing 3-Day "sweep van" and get a ride. The idea is that walkers have a safe "out" if they're having problems on the route, but in practice, you get some people who decide to get swept because a big hill is coming up and they're just not in the mood. :)
I've never set foot in a sweep van... not that there's anything wrong with taking a sweep van if you need it, but it's a matter of personal pride to train well enough that I should never need to get in a sweep van unless something really really awful happens, like, oh, tripping over someone's Yorkshire terrier at a cheering station and banging up my leg. (I love dogs, but please, people, have them on leashes if you bring them to cheering stations, okay?)
When I was a kid I took part in three or four 11-mile "Hunger Hikes" (now called the "CROP Walk") in my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia. My father was fond of predicting the exact mile marker where I'd call for a ride or where I'd poop out. I never did, of course, despite being a nerdy little wimp at that point in my life. Always made it to the finish line, usually ahead of the main pack of walkers. Perhaps Dad was just doing it to motivate me, but who knows? All I know is that I've personally vowed that if it comes down to a choice between taking a sweep van or crawling to camp using my eyelashes, I'll crawl. I'm really stupid that way.
So anyway... the plan for the DC 3-Day is to walk with the "caboose" the whole way. More 3-Day glossary for you non-participants: the "caboose" is the name for the tail-end of the pack. There's a 3-Day staff member riding a mountain bike with an orange pennant on the back, sloooooowwwwwwwly following along behind the last walkers. The caboose rider is in radio contact with the command center, and if it should happen that the last walkers are going so slowly that they'll be arriving at the next pit stop after its scheduled closing time, the caboose rider summons a sweep van, waits until it's arrived and the walkers are on board, and then hurries on down the route to catch up to the remaining walkers.
When you're working a pit stop as a member of the 3-Day crew, it's a moment of considerable excitement when the word comes "the caboose is here!" When the caboose departs your pit, it's time to break things down, pack things up, and put everything away. You're done for the day. Each pit stop has a scheduled opening time and a scheduled closing time. If walkers arrive at a pit too quickly, before the scheduled opening time, they're held until the official time comes... otherwise, you'd have the real power-walkers arriving at pit stops that hadn't even gotten set up yet. And if the closing time for a pit stop comes with walkers still on the route and not yet there, as I said, they get swept. The opening and closing times for the five pit stops and two grab 'n' gos are staggered so that the first pit stops open almost as soon as the route is open but close by noon, while the last pit stops open in late morning and remain open until late afternoon.
My wife walked the Dallas 3-Day last year as a solo walker to make up for not getting to walk all sixty miles in the rain-shortened Philadelphia 3-Day. She wound up so far back in the pack on Day 1 that she was getting to pits as they were just starting to close and crew members were going around telling walkers "We close in five minutes." And she'd just gotten there. It wasn't her fault, really -- she'd gotten trapped in a pack of very slow moving walkers leaving opening ceremonies, and had been unable to pass anyone because the sidewalks on that part of the route were really really narrow. Not fun, really. It can be very frustrating when you're well trained and in good shape and simply can't get going because the people around you are, well, being sort of snail-like. That's one reason neither of us is terribly interested in ever being part of a large 3-Day team that emphasizes keeping the team together on the route.
But this weekend in the DC 3-Day, I'm going to slow down. I'm going to be do my utmost to be back at the back of the train, not getting caught in the upsweep of emotion that generally gets me all revved up and kerzooming down the route at top speed. I'm going to mosey out of opening, mosey down the route trying hard not to pass anyone, take my time at pit stops, take my time at lunch, and basically try to work my way back until I'm walking with the caboose. My goal is to talk to the people who aren't in race walker condition; the breast cancer survivors who are three weeks removed from their chemo and radiation and who consider it a victory to finish at all, let alone fretting about trivialities like "I was fifth on Day 1" and junk like that. I don't want to be the person who hears others saying "Did you meet Julia? 68 years old, gray hair? She was at the back of the pack? SO inspiring, walking for her three sisters, her cousin, and her daughter even though she's currently in chemo herself." I want to be the person who says "Did I meet Julia? I should say so! I was there when we were walking by these construction workers, and I heard someone whistle, and I looked around, and it was Julia!" I call this silly little plan of mine Project Bloop.
Everyone walks the 3-Day for their own reasons. Some do it because they lost members of their family to breast cancer. Others do it because they're battling breast cancer themselves. Some walk because they're employed in the field of health care and know all too well the human cost that breast cancer takes. I'm sure that you could make a case that no one person's story is intrinsically more interesting than any other's, but I just have a suspicion that it's going to be the people who can't walk five miles an hour, who are doing well to walk two miles an hour, but who keep going no matter what, that have the most interesting stories to tell. And this weekend, assuming I get this cold under control, my goal is to hear some of them.
My only worry is that, as I said, I'd really really hate to get swept myself. I can go five miles an hour if I need to, so I guess what I'll do is talk to the caboose rider early on the first day and explain what I'm doing, and ask her to tell me if the walkers I'm with are in danger of being swept due to slowness. If that happens, I'll speed up to whatever pace will keep me from getting swept. I can also keep an eye on the route information card they give all walkers at opening -- if it says Pit 4 is open until 2:30 p.m., then I had better make sure that I'm not two miles away from Pit 2 at that time.
My goal is NOT to be the last walker into camp. I do not want to take the prestige of being Last Walker away from someone who gamely stuck it out and walked all 21 miles on Day 1 despite being in middling poor health. Again, for those of you who've never done a 3-Day, you might be surprised to learn that everyone goes absolutely BANANAS when the last walker arrives in camp. People will be sitting at dinner in the big dining tent, or listening to the "3-Day Rock Star" karaoke competition, when someone will announce on the PA that "The last walker is entering camp!" And everyone rushes out to meet the last walker, or stands and claps and cheers as the last walker comes through the dining tent, and then we all go out and applaud as the last walker raises the ceremonial "One Day Closer To A World Without Breast Cancer" flag and receives the "Last Walker" legacy pin. I've seen cases where the Last Walker was actually the Last Walkers, where the last people on the route came in arm-in-arm, refusing to appoint one of their number the official Last. I assume that the 3-Day staff have enough pins on hand to give each one of them a Last Walker pin, but I don't really know.
All I know is that it's going to be darned weird if, say, I'm walking with two or three walkers a couple miles from camp when all of a sudden they decide that they can't make it the rest of the way and ask for a sweep van. It could happen. And if it does, there I'd be, last walker on the route, looking sheepishly at the caboose rider. When I shared that scenario with my wife, she said "Then you'd have to get swept with them."
I said "Wha wha wha WHAT?"
She said "To avoid stealing Last Walker from them, you'd have to be swept with them."
"But," I said, "I don't WANT to get swept."
"Tough," she said. "If you're with the last walkers, and they decide to be swept, you get swept. You HAVE to."
I can see that this is going to be difficult. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the last walkers don't pull a fast one like that on me. :)
(But in any case, this is all going to be water under the bridge if I don't get healthy. Say a few words to whatever deity you honor tonight and ask for a gift of health, if you don't mind. I hate to think that I might have done all that lonely training on the roads of Vermont only to be too sick to walk come the event.)
I'll be honest: my thoughts right now are not really focused on walking sixty miles through the streets of the District of Columbia and Maryland. Instead, I'm thinking more in terms of: "I need more hot tea. Wonder if it's too soon to take another cold capsule. Boy, I feel achy. Guess I should take some ibuprofen."
Yeah. I've got a bad cold.
I woke up at o'dark thirty yesterday morning to catch a flight to DC for work, conveniently -- had a class to lead on site at a customer in Maryland Tuesday through Thursday. I was pleased when I was able to work it out that rather than being on the far side of the country the day before the DC 3-Day, I'll be only a dozen miles away from opening. But I was rather less pleased when, upon waking yesterday, I realized I felt stuffy and achy and awful. I slept all the way here on the plane and was only somewhat functional as I drove north from Washington National Airport to my hotel here in Silver Spring. I slept most of the rest of the day Sunday and through the night, waking periodically to take ibuprofen and drink water, and this morning, if anything, I felt worse. That necessitated my canceling a one-day distance-learning class for internal staff at my company that I was to have led, but I just felt too rotten. I needed to do whatever I could to be in shape for the paying customers here in Maryland tomorrow, and that meant getting as much rest and healthy liquid as possible. After sleeping all day, I feel almost human. I went out and bought soup and hot tea and teabags and juice and some cold capsules and I'm dressed and sitting at the desk in my room, trying to get as much liquid on board as I can.
I had a similar nasty cold for a couple of days last week, a cold which knocked me out for Monday and Tuesday but was mostly gone by Wednesday. I am praying that this one will work its course in similar fashion, because, c'mon, I really don't want to have to make a choice between being healthy enough to work next week and walking the DC 3-Day this weekend.
But on the "plus" side of things, I wasn't planning on setting any land speed records this weekend.
As I've said in previous blog entries, I speed-walked the Twin Cities 3-Day back in August, finishing fifth the first day, 19th the second day, and 9th the third day. This was due to a combination of guilty thoughts (i.e., "I'm not doing all I can. MUST ... WALK... FASTER...") and exhilaration at having trained so well that the walk was almost effortless for me. I didn't have a single blister at the end of the 60+ miles. I had a toenail I was worried about losing, but it's still attached. Yay me.
So my plan for DC is to do the exact opposite. Rather than finding out how fast I can go on the route without actually running, I now intend to see how slow I can go on the route without getting swept.
For those of you who've never walked a 3-Day, we have this system where walkers who need a lift to the next pit stop or to lunch or to camp can signal a passing 3-Day "sweep van" and get a ride. The idea is that walkers have a safe "out" if they're having problems on the route, but in practice, you get some people who decide to get swept because a big hill is coming up and they're just not in the mood. :)
I've never set foot in a sweep van... not that there's anything wrong with taking a sweep van if you need it, but it's a matter of personal pride to train well enough that I should never need to get in a sweep van unless something really really awful happens, like, oh, tripping over someone's Yorkshire terrier at a cheering station and banging up my leg. (I love dogs, but please, people, have them on leashes if you bring them to cheering stations, okay?)
When I was a kid I took part in three or four 11-mile "Hunger Hikes" (now called the "CROP Walk") in my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia. My father was fond of predicting the exact mile marker where I'd call for a ride or where I'd poop out. I never did, of course, despite being a nerdy little wimp at that point in my life. Always made it to the finish line, usually ahead of the main pack of walkers. Perhaps Dad was just doing it to motivate me, but who knows? All I know is that I've personally vowed that if it comes down to a choice between taking a sweep van or crawling to camp using my eyelashes, I'll crawl. I'm really stupid that way.
So anyway... the plan for the DC 3-Day is to walk with the "caboose" the whole way. More 3-Day glossary for you non-participants: the "caboose" is the name for the tail-end of the pack. There's a 3-Day staff member riding a mountain bike with an orange pennant on the back, sloooooowwwwwwwly following along behind the last walkers. The caboose rider is in radio contact with the command center, and if it should happen that the last walkers are going so slowly that they'll be arriving at the next pit stop after its scheduled closing time, the caboose rider summons a sweep van, waits until it's arrived and the walkers are on board, and then hurries on down the route to catch up to the remaining walkers.
When you're working a pit stop as a member of the 3-Day crew, it's a moment of considerable excitement when the word comes "the caboose is here!" When the caboose departs your pit, it's time to break things down, pack things up, and put everything away. You're done for the day. Each pit stop has a scheduled opening time and a scheduled closing time. If walkers arrive at a pit too quickly, before the scheduled opening time, they're held until the official time comes... otherwise, you'd have the real power-walkers arriving at pit stops that hadn't even gotten set up yet. And if the closing time for a pit stop comes with walkers still on the route and not yet there, as I said, they get swept. The opening and closing times for the five pit stops and two grab 'n' gos are staggered so that the first pit stops open almost as soon as the route is open but close by noon, while the last pit stops open in late morning and remain open until late afternoon.
My wife walked the Dallas 3-Day last year as a solo walker to make up for not getting to walk all sixty miles in the rain-shortened Philadelphia 3-Day. She wound up so far back in the pack on Day 1 that she was getting to pits as they were just starting to close and crew members were going around telling walkers "We close in five minutes." And she'd just gotten there. It wasn't her fault, really -- she'd gotten trapped in a pack of very slow moving walkers leaving opening ceremonies, and had been unable to pass anyone because the sidewalks on that part of the route were really really narrow. Not fun, really. It can be very frustrating when you're well trained and in good shape and simply can't get going because the people around you are, well, being sort of snail-like. That's one reason neither of us is terribly interested in ever being part of a large 3-Day team that emphasizes keeping the team together on the route.
But this weekend in the DC 3-Day, I'm going to slow down. I'm going to be do my utmost to be back at the back of the train, not getting caught in the upsweep of emotion that generally gets me all revved up and kerzooming down the route at top speed. I'm going to mosey out of opening, mosey down the route trying hard not to pass anyone, take my time at pit stops, take my time at lunch, and basically try to work my way back until I'm walking with the caboose. My goal is to talk to the people who aren't in race walker condition; the breast cancer survivors who are three weeks removed from their chemo and radiation and who consider it a victory to finish at all, let alone fretting about trivialities like "I was fifth on Day 1" and junk like that. I don't want to be the person who hears others saying "Did you meet Julia? 68 years old, gray hair? She was at the back of the pack? SO inspiring, walking for her three sisters, her cousin, and her daughter even though she's currently in chemo herself." I want to be the person who says "Did I meet Julia? I should say so! I was there when we were walking by these construction workers, and I heard someone whistle, and I looked around, and it was Julia!" I call this silly little plan of mine Project Bloop.
Everyone walks the 3-Day for their own reasons. Some do it because they lost members of their family to breast cancer. Others do it because they're battling breast cancer themselves. Some walk because they're employed in the field of health care and know all too well the human cost that breast cancer takes. I'm sure that you could make a case that no one person's story is intrinsically more interesting than any other's, but I just have a suspicion that it's going to be the people who can't walk five miles an hour, who are doing well to walk two miles an hour, but who keep going no matter what, that have the most interesting stories to tell. And this weekend, assuming I get this cold under control, my goal is to hear some of them.
My only worry is that, as I said, I'd really really hate to get swept myself. I can go five miles an hour if I need to, so I guess what I'll do is talk to the caboose rider early on the first day and explain what I'm doing, and ask her to tell me if the walkers I'm with are in danger of being swept due to slowness. If that happens, I'll speed up to whatever pace will keep me from getting swept. I can also keep an eye on the route information card they give all walkers at opening -- if it says Pit 4 is open until 2:30 p.m., then I had better make sure that I'm not two miles away from Pit 2 at that time.
My goal is NOT to be the last walker into camp. I do not want to take the prestige of being Last Walker away from someone who gamely stuck it out and walked all 21 miles on Day 1 despite being in middling poor health. Again, for those of you who've never done a 3-Day, you might be surprised to learn that everyone goes absolutely BANANAS when the last walker arrives in camp. People will be sitting at dinner in the big dining tent, or listening to the "3-Day Rock Star" karaoke competition, when someone will announce on the PA that "The last walker is entering camp!" And everyone rushes out to meet the last walker, or stands and claps and cheers as the last walker comes through the dining tent, and then we all go out and applaud as the last walker raises the ceremonial "One Day Closer To A World Without Breast Cancer" flag and receives the "Last Walker" legacy pin. I've seen cases where the Last Walker was actually the Last Walkers, where the last people on the route came in arm-in-arm, refusing to appoint one of their number the official Last. I assume that the 3-Day staff have enough pins on hand to give each one of them a Last Walker pin, but I don't really know.
All I know is that it's going to be darned weird if, say, I'm walking with two or three walkers a couple miles from camp when all of a sudden they decide that they can't make it the rest of the way and ask for a sweep van. It could happen. And if it does, there I'd be, last walker on the route, looking sheepishly at the caboose rider. When I shared that scenario with my wife, she said "Then you'd have to get swept with them."
I said "Wha wha wha WHAT?"
She said "To avoid stealing Last Walker from them, you'd have to be swept with them."
"But," I said, "I don't WANT to get swept."
"Tough," she said. "If you're with the last walkers, and they decide to be swept, you get swept. You HAVE to."
I can see that this is going to be difficult. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the last walkers don't pull a fast one like that on me. :)
(But in any case, this is all going to be water under the bridge if I don't get healthy. Say a few words to whatever deity you honor tonight and ask for a gift of health, if you don't mind. I hate to think that I might have done all that lonely training on the roads of Vermont only to be too sick to walk come the event.)
