I fight like a girl.
This past weekend I participated in my third Breast Cancer 3-Day. It's a 60 mile walk over the course of three days to help find an end to breast cancer. 85 percent of the proceeds go to the Susan G Komen Foundation and the other 15 percent go to the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.
Many pictures below cut.
Opening ceremonies began at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Husband was at work so my daddy dropped me off at 5:30 a.m. and I found Mommy and the rest of my team. It's hard to find people at 5:30 in the morning when your brain is telling you how stupid you are for being awake.
We had to wait around a while for it to start, so I just snapped random pictures to keep myself awake. I did not realize you could see up this woman's nostril while taking this picture.
After that is when my camera died and all the spare batteries were in my gear, heading to camp on the truck. I didn't get pictures of all the walkers leaving the fairgrounds, but I managed to coax my camera into taking a couple more shots that day.
This was my team. The Smile Guy is a man who comes out to cheer at the 3-Day every year. His wife was our team leader.
Our route looked like this almost the entire way.
Why hello, young surfer boy.
Why hello, fat seals.
20.1 miles and ten hours later, we arrived in camp. We camped in Mission Bay Park, aka Tent City. This is just section B. There were 2000 tents set up.
Day 2, armed with fresh batteries. The route opened at 6:15 a.m., but despite being up since 5:00, Mommy and I were definitely not ready. This is because I was eating a lot of bacon at breakfast instead of being ready to walk. When we finally did leave around 7:00, these flags lined the exit from camp.
It was foggy and chilly and I was generally unhappy about this, but Rule One on the 3-Day is no whining. So I didn't.
Shamu was happy to see us.
Lots to see while you walk. This includes a lot of ass, since you're pretty much staring at the people's butts in front of you. Fortunately, most people choose to wear some sort of symbolic shirt or accessory to make things interesting.
This one is hard to see, but it was one of several shirts I saw that were asking for donations because the walker hadn't yet met their goal. Fortunately, this was not the case for me, in large part because of you guys. Thank you, thank you. ♥ ♥ ♥
Walkers, walkers, everywhere.
At the beginning of each day, they hand you a route card to show how long between stops. Even though you look at this darn thing about fifty times, it never changes. The goal is to make it to your next pit stop.
At every pit stop are the extremely important necessities:
And of course, these. Ew.
Many, many doggies were out with their owners to cheer the walkers on. It made me miss my two puppers.
Medical help was ever-present, naturally, as were the sweep vans.
Oh, those helpful firemen.
So that was Day 2. Pretty much like Day 1, except more with the tired. But no whining!
Day 3 involved waking up at 4:30 a.m. to try and shove everything I came with, including my sleeping bag, back into my duffel to load it on the gear trucks. I am happy to say I succeeded. You can see my fuzzy pink boa I wore that day, as well as the stupid head bopper things to represent my team. Oh, and Mommy's shoes.
Not only did we have to set up our own tents the first day (after walking 20 miles), but we had to take them down again on Day 3. Again, I was triumphant and proved smarter than the tent.
And then we walked. The San Jose bike police had come down south to escort us the entire three days, and on Day 3 they wore pinks shirts. ♥ for the bike boys.
Here is the shirt that Mommy wore on Day 3. Mine was exactly the same, except replace "daughter" with "mom" and there you go. We got nice comments from other walkers and one man stopped us to take a picture of the back. The little hearts are names of people that donated for us and/or needed to be remembered or celebrated.
We had so much community support along the way.
Some pictures speak for themselves.
And then, 20 miles later, we were cheered across the finish line and into Petco Park, where we received our white victory shirts.
After all the walkers make it into Holding, they line us up to take our victory march into closing ceremonies among the crowd. It's pretty awesome. I couldn't take pictures until I was actually inside closing ceremonies, and it was hard to get good ones of people walking in. So I took pics of the stage and stuff instead.
Then the survivors come in. There's no way to accurately describe seeing all of the breast cancer survivors who walked among us all weekend. They wear pink victory shirts and they march in together and everyone takes off a shoe in honor of their journey. I couldn't get a good pic of them, but you can see how we honor them.
I had a great view of the Survivor's Circle in front of me. They each hold a banner and stand around the breast cancer flagpole.
The final part of the ceremony is raising the World Without Breast Cancer flag. I love how the survivors are so happy in this picture.
Then it was over and we found our families and our gear and fell asleep for six hundred hours.
........... ONE LAST PICTURE. I've done this three times, and all three times I've gotten pretty bad blisters on both feet. I've done everything you can do to prevent this, so even though you might have the Best Blister Prevention Tip Ever omg, please know that I have tried it all. Socks, shoes, Vaseline, moleskin, Second Skin, training extra miles, EVERYEFFINGTHING. It doesn't help.
See?
There was an identical one on my left heel, as well as several others in various places. It sucked. But I walked, because blisters don't need chemotherapy.
If you're celebrating American Thanksgiving, please find something to be thankful for. I know I am.
Many pictures below cut.
Opening ceremonies began at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Husband was at work so my daddy dropped me off at 5:30 a.m. and I found Mommy and the rest of my team. It's hard to find people at 5:30 in the morning when your brain is telling you how stupid you are for being awake.
We had to wait around a while for it to start, so I just snapped random pictures to keep myself awake. I did not realize you could see up this woman's nostril while taking this picture.
After that is when my camera died and all the spare batteries were in my gear, heading to camp on the truck. I didn't get pictures of all the walkers leaving the fairgrounds, but I managed to coax my camera into taking a couple more shots that day.
This was my team. The Smile Guy is a man who comes out to cheer at the 3-Day every year. His wife was our team leader.
Our route looked like this almost the entire way.
Why hello, young surfer boy.
Why hello, fat seals.
20.1 miles and ten hours later, we arrived in camp. We camped in Mission Bay Park, aka Tent City. This is just section B. There were 2000 tents set up.
Day 2, armed with fresh batteries. The route opened at 6:15 a.m., but despite being up since 5:00, Mommy and I were definitely not ready. This is because I was eating a lot of bacon at breakfast instead of being ready to walk. When we finally did leave around 7:00, these flags lined the exit from camp.
It was foggy and chilly and I was generally unhappy about this, but Rule One on the 3-Day is no whining. So I didn't.
Shamu was happy to see us.
Lots to see while you walk. This includes a lot of ass, since you're pretty much staring at the people's butts in front of you. Fortunately, most people choose to wear some sort of symbolic shirt or accessory to make things interesting.
This one is hard to see, but it was one of several shirts I saw that were asking for donations because the walker hadn't yet met their goal. Fortunately, this was not the case for me, in large part because of you guys. Thank you, thank you. ♥ ♥ ♥
Walkers, walkers, everywhere.
At the beginning of each day, they hand you a route card to show how long between stops. Even though you look at this darn thing about fifty times, it never changes. The goal is to make it to your next pit stop.
At every pit stop are the extremely important necessities:
And of course, these. Ew.
Many, many doggies were out with their owners to cheer the walkers on. It made me miss my two puppers.
Medical help was ever-present, naturally, as were the sweep vans.
Oh, those helpful firemen.
So that was Day 2. Pretty much like Day 1, except more with the tired. But no whining!
Day 3 involved waking up at 4:30 a.m. to try and shove everything I came with, including my sleeping bag, back into my duffel to load it on the gear trucks. I am happy to say I succeeded. You can see my fuzzy pink boa I wore that day, as well as the stupid head bopper things to represent my team. Oh, and Mommy's shoes.
Not only did we have to set up our own tents the first day (after walking 20 miles), but we had to take them down again on Day 3. Again, I was triumphant and proved smarter than the tent.
And then we walked. The San Jose bike police had come down south to escort us the entire three days, and on Day 3 they wore pinks shirts. ♥ for the bike boys.
Here is the shirt that Mommy wore on Day 3. Mine was exactly the same, except replace "daughter" with "mom" and there you go. We got nice comments from other walkers and one man stopped us to take a picture of the back. The little hearts are names of people that donated for us and/or needed to be remembered or celebrated.
We had so much community support along the way.
Some pictures speak for themselves.
And then, 20 miles later, we were cheered across the finish line and into Petco Park, where we received our white victory shirts.
After all the walkers make it into Holding, they line us up to take our victory march into closing ceremonies among the crowd. It's pretty awesome. I couldn't take pictures until I was actually inside closing ceremonies, and it was hard to get good ones of people walking in. So I took pics of the stage and stuff instead.
Then the survivors come in. There's no way to accurately describe seeing all of the breast cancer survivors who walked among us all weekend. They wear pink victory shirts and they march in together and everyone takes off a shoe in honor of their journey. I couldn't get a good pic of them, but you can see how we honor them.
I had a great view of the Survivor's Circle in front of me. They each hold a banner and stand around the breast cancer flagpole.
The final part of the ceremony is raising the World Without Breast Cancer flag. I love how the survivors are so happy in this picture.
Then it was over and we found our families and our gear and fell asleep for six hundred hours.
........... ONE LAST PICTURE. I've done this three times, and all three times I've gotten pretty bad blisters on both feet. I've done everything you can do to prevent this, so even though you might have the Best Blister Prevention Tip Ever omg, please know that I have tried it all. Socks, shoes, Vaseline, moleskin, Second Skin, training extra miles, EVERYEFFINGTHING. It doesn't help.
See?
There was an identical one on my left heel, as well as several others in various places. It sucked. But I walked, because blisters don't need chemotherapy.
If you're celebrating American Thanksgiving, please find something to be thankful for. I know I am.