Day Two of the 3-Day: Ice!

Before getting started on the second day of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, I checked my feet carefully. I was lucky not to have gotten any blisters despite the very wet conditions on the first day of the walk. I did have a couple of spots that felt "hot", so I put on some moleskin and coated my feet in Body Glide, then put on my socks and my new (and dry) shoes. It was going to be a 21 mile day, and I needed to get my injured toes checked out as early as possible. They were sore and looked even worse then they felt. I got my foot checked out at the first pit stop at the medical tent. The nurse felt it looked pretty bad and gave me packets of antibiotic and a bag of ice. She told me to ice my toes at every stop for about 10 minutes. So for most of the walk, I carried a slowly melting bag of ice. I'd get ice added at each stop, sit on the ground, and put the bag on my toes. It definitely helped with the swelling, and made the pain lessen. Compared to the many terrible blisters I saw on people's feet, not to mention the guy walking the walk with a prothesis from the hip down, my toe injury seemed fairly minor.

While I feel like I am walking this walk for anyone with breast cancer, or any type of cancer, there is one person in particular I am doing this for:
As I left the camp, I turned and snapped a shot of walkers coming through the row of banners.
A lot of the route went along parks and other open areas on paved paths. It was a very pleasant walk, with nice scenery a lot of the way. Plus, even though it got warm, it was not raining, which put everyone in a festive mood.
I saw more interesting decorations about and depictions of breasts today than I think I'd ever seen, including this truck:
These two buxom gals were at one of the pit stops. I wanted a photo and they insisted I get in the picture with them, at boob level. It would have been rude not to comply, don't you think?
Part of our route went through downtown Bethesda, where I had never been before. It seemed like a nice city, with some great looking restaurants and pubs. It was also the one spot on the route this day with a lot of people cheering, which made us move our tired legs just a bit faster.

I walked with this group for a few minutes and decided to take a photo of them.
At the end of the walk, I decided to pose with the day's poster back in camp. I'd survived 21 miles, my longest distance since the Arizona Marathon in 2008, with plantar fasciitis in one foot and bashed toes on the other. I knew that I could get through another day.

A Freak Injury in 3-Day Camp

When you are training for an endurance event, such as the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure or a marathon, one of the things in the back of your mind is a freak injury. I got two of these last year just before my half marathon in Seattle - a rolled ankle and a slight tear to a calf muscle. I was lucky, because had either been a little more severe, it could have knocked me out of the race. I had a similar incident the first night, Friday, in our muddy camp.

I had eaten dinner and returned to my pink tent to rest a bit and read. After a while, I decided to go back to the main tent to watch the camp show. It turned out that I was too late, but as I walked down the mulch path that the crew had put down, my left heel stepped on a large chuck of mulch, like a piece of a branch. The force lifted the opposite end into the air and pivoted it backwards. A fraction of a second later, my right foot swung, toes first, into the piece of wood made immobile by my weight. I was wearing my open toes crocs because of the muddy conditions, and I drove two toes right into the wood. The pain was such that I nearly said a very bad word. Maybe I did. In any event, I knew I had done some damage.

I got up a couple of times during the night to take a pee, and each time, my right foot hurt a good bit as I limped along. In the morning, I could see that my toes were bruised and there was a slight cut. Then I worried about getting an infection from having mud all over my feet and tried to remember when my last tetanus shot had been. I washed my feet using my water bottle and put on my running shoes. I could walk okay, although the 21 miles that day would not be pain-free. But I decided that at the first aid station of the day, I would stop and see if they had any antibiotic.

There Was Lots of Joy in Mudville

"No Whining!" That is one of the mantras of Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure participants. After all, you are not going to walk 60 miles in three days and sleep out in a tent without some pain and discomfort, and that is under the best of circumstances. And with an almost all day rainfall which turned parts of our campground into a sea of mud, our circumstances were no where near the best. But it didn't matter. I heard no whining. People were upbeat and happy, and choose to be inspired and grateful that we were all doing this.

That being said, there was a lot of mud. I had two pairs of running shoes with me, one of which could not have been wetter. I had a pair of crocs, which I wore as shower shoes. I also wore them around the camp that night rather than risk coating my remaining pair of shoes with mud. But as a consequence, my feet got coated in mud over and over. There was no way to get them clean. The race crew did yeoman's duty putting down paths of mulch (more on that later) so we could walk in relative dryness in parts of the camp. But other areas, especially the low area between our tents and the latrines, were like walking through a swamp. You would litterally sink several inches into the mud. Mud would ooze between my toes. The floors of the portapotties were coated in mud and slimy water. It was like the beginning of my thoughts on the worst thing that could happen on the walk. I stuffed napkins into my wet pair of shoes, and they helped to dry them over the next 24 hours so that I could wear them Saturday night instead of my crocs. Thus my feet didn't get muddy the next night.

When I would get back to the tent after a trip to the portapotties or the dining area, I would use one of the towels left behind to wipe the worst of the mud off my feet. Even so, my feet were coated in mud by morning. It stopped raining about 7PM Friday, and so at least the mud didn't get worse. On Saturday morning, I walked to the sink area with one of the muddy towels and my water bottle. I also took some napkins. I would fill the water bottle over and over and squirt my feet with it, then wipe my feet with the towel. Eventually they got clean enough that I could wipe my feet with the napkins and finally dry my feet pretty well. Then I put on my socks and running shoes for the day's long walk, and was good to go.

Would I, and everyone else, have preferred dry conditions and no mud? Absolutely! Did we let the muddy conditions dampen our spirits? Absolutely not! There was no lack of joy in Mudville.

The Land of the Pink Tents

Have you ever slept in a pink tent? How about you, fellow manly men - have you ever slept in a pink tent?

After a very wet and tiring day of walking the bus dropped us off at our camp. The rain was still coming down, and I was not looking forward to setting up my tent. This is when I got two lucky breaks. I walked around camp getting oriented, and found the area of camp where my row of tents - Row I - would be. I walked down the row, and lo and behold, my tent was up. A young man came up to me, and said "Are you Art?" "Sure am," I said, extending my hand. His name was Devon, my tent mate, and he had already put up our tent. Then I got my second stroke of luck for the day.

The two women who had the tent next to us had decided they had had enough rain and discomfort, and had decided staying in a hotel would be better for them. They had told Devon that he could use their tent. Thus, we each had a tent to ourselves, which given all the wet geat to spread out, was great. As a third stroke of luck, there was water in the tent, and they had left two towels in there - towels I used over and over to mop up water and semi-clean mud off my feet.

I located my gear - very lucky because it was in the middle of the pile for "Row I" and thus not wet and muddy like some of the bags towards the edges of the pile - and lugged it up the rise to my tent. I crawled in and unpacked some of my stuff, sopping up water with the towels. The rain beat down on the tent and it was stuffy in there, so I didn't linger long. I grabbed some clean (and dry) clothing and headed down for a shower. It was about a third of a mile each way. The smartest thing I have ever done is pay $12 for two days of towel service. I got two big towels for each shower and didn't have a wet towel to use the next day stinking up my tent. The showers were set up in these big portable shower trucks, one for men, the rest for women. The water was piping hot and felt great. There were also some outdoor sinks for brushing one's teeth, shaving, and so forth.The camp was very comfortable, even in the rain and mud. There were banks of portapotties, two big tenting areas on rises so they were fairly dry, and a huge dining tent. There was also a food serving area, and a bank of smaller tents for getting messages, relaxing, and checking out displays. A Komen 3-Day store was also set up, and a Bank of America area where you could sit in a massage chair for a few minutes. There was also a remembrance area, which I will discuss later. This is a view of the food serving area (right) and a small part of the huge dining tent (left).Here I am on Saturday evening outside my tent. Inside, it looks like a running store and an REI store had a couple of sticks of dynamite go off. And it smelled like something crawled into the tent, vomited, and died! I couldn't figure it out until I got home and got a good whiff of my Friday running shoes! OMG!

Living Strong in Second Place

Do you see the glass as half full or as half empty? I usually see it as half full, so I can say that today, I finished second in my age group at the Livestong Dolphin Challenge 10K at Sandbridge, Virginia. If I saw the glass as half empty, I could say that I finished last in my age cohort, because there were just two men (and no women) age 60 and above in the 10K. But the way I see it, the guys that finished last were the ones who slept in, or sat on the couch all day, right? So, why would I want to run a 10K just 6 days after finishing the long and arduous Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure? Well, consider these reasons:

1. I wanted to wear the shirt with my sister's picture in one more fighting cancer event.
2. I'd not yet done a race as a 60 year old guy
3. My sister Ann's birthday was a few days ago. It felt good to start and end the week of her birthday doing an event like this.
4. The last time all of my siblings and I will ever be together was here at Sandbridge almost exactly three years ago for Ann's 60th birthday. Now she is gone, and I was doing this race as a 60 year old.
So a couple of days ago, my damaged foot (severely bruised toes) from the 3-Day feeling much better, I decided to sign up for the Livestrong event. I have not run in five months (since the Monument Avenue 10K), so I did a walk - run mix, with the emphasis on the walk. It took me an hour and 17 minutes, although I added about 0.2 miles to the race when I missed the turnaround point. I was happy with my time, given 60 miles last weekend, my continuing plantar fasciitis, my toe injury, and my lack of running. I may be old, I may be slow, but at least I was on the go! And I did finish second in my age group, regardless.

This is a true run by the ocean. This was the view just a few meters from the start of the race:
Before the start, I asked a lady to take a photo of me wearing the same shirt with my sister Ann's photo on it that I wore on the third day of the Komen 3-Day last Sunday.
Just 200 meters into the race, this is what the field looked like. Most of the people were doing a 5K, but it seemed like at least 50-70 people ran the 10K:
The route ran right up Sand Fiddler Road, with the ocean just yards away the entire 10K:
This being the beach, you can find some pretty cool decorations along the ocean front homes, like this rockfish at the 5K mark, and this cool dolphin:
Here I am holding my trophy, and a close up of my second place trophy:

Day One of the 3-Day: Wet!

So, the opening ceremony was over, and we moved through "cattle chutes" to start the walk, getting our 3-Day ID scanned as we left the chute. This event had impressive organization and safety consciousness. The weather was still dry, but that would change - oh, how that would change! In any type of endurance event I have trained for, one of the things that is emphasized is to train in all types of conditions: hot and cold, wet and dry, hilly and flat. Well, forget about cold, and as it turned out, I only had a couple of times training in rain, the most notable of which was a nice hike up Cold Mountain. Today would make up for that. Our route was 17 miles, and criss-crossed Washington, DC, ending up eventually in Maryland. Most of the time, I had no idea where we were, although I know we went through the government area, Georgetown, and Adams-Morgan. Much of the time, I walked by myself. Other times, I struck up conversations with people and walked with them for a little ways. The most difficult part, other than the rain, was the constant stopping for traffic lights and when people got bunched up.

The support on the walk was fantastic! We had a number of vans patrolling for stragglers or people who could not walk anymore. They cheered for us every time they went by. Each had a decoration theme. I loved this one! So funny!

We are going by the lovely Botanical Gardens here, just a mile or so from the start of the walk.
Is Minnie Mouse cheering us on? She is sporting pink.
This is me with our Capital in the background. Too bad Congress can't get along as well and as cooperatively as everyone did on this walk. I later got a pink lei, but didn't have it yet to compliment my green shirt from last year's Seattle Half-Marathon.
This was the first porta-potty stop. It was drizzling and cool. The lines were long, probably the longest toilet lines of the whole three days because people were still clustered. Note the copious amounts of pink!
These two ladies from Florida sported really cool pink flamingos. I can't imagine how soggy these got later in the day!
Shortly after seeing the Washington Monument, the drizzle became a steady rain, and I took no more pictures for the walk except a few, sneaking the camera out of its plastic bag for as briefly as I could.
Lunch was memorable! We sat on the ground in a driving rain, trying to keep our sandwich and chips dry. I bolted my food and started walking again. I heard no complaining, from me or from anyone else.
Most people walked in some type of rain gear, including the disposable rain jackets that they gave us. I tried the rain gear for a while, but got too hot, although I ended my walk for the day putting the poncho back on again.
At some point after lunch, I changed my socks to a dry pair. They were soaked within half a mile. Eventually I stopped at a bus stop to put on moleskin on a couple of "hot spots," and wrang the water out of my socks. I got a good half cup out of each pair.

I risked one last photo in the rain to capture the National Cathedral, which I had never seen before. It was recently damaged by our earthquake.
A few miles after this point, somewhere in Maryland, our 17 miles was over for the day, and we caught a 20 minute bus ride to camp, the rain still beating down. I was not looking forward to putting up my tent in the rain.

The Komen 3-Day Opening Ceremony

The Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure kicked off with a great opening ceremony. It was still kind of dark at 6:30 when we all gathered outside the Washington Nationals baseball stadium and faced the stage. Music pounded. The skies were overcast, but there was no "liquid sunshine" yet. The crowd was high energy. A young woman came on stage. She was a doctor, and a breast cancer survivor. She was the highest energy, most enthusiasic doctor you will ever meet, and we would see her many times over the next three days. She had also done the 3-Day herself, and knew what we were in for.

As she spoke, I continued to look around the crowd. I saw a few men, but there was a lot more estrogen here than testosterone. It also was clear to me that I had been wrong about something. In my first Komen 5K, only breast cancer survivors had worn pink, so I assumed that this would be the case with the 3-Day. But there were far too many people in pink for that to be the case, including many men. I found myself wishing that I had a pink dry-fit shirt.

I really liked this woman's hat. She and two friends had identical skull caps that mimicked breasts, including the areola and nipple! On the last day of the walk, I ran into them along the route and chatted for a couple of minutes about their hats.

For me, the most moving part of the opening ceremony involved the flag raising. A single woman - a breast cancer survivor - walked through the crowd and climbed the steps to a circular platform. She carried a large white banner, covered with text that people were had written. The text was messages written by participants about people who had died from breast cancer. I wish I had seen it before hand, because I would have written a message for Ann. This banner is called the "remembrance flag," I think. The woman slowly raised the banner up a flagpole, and then she was joined by eight other women - all breast cancer survivors - who each carried a banner. They formed a circle around her. I so wished my sister could have joined them as a survivor, but was very much moved by the nine of them, knowing what hardships they had endured and gotten past.

After the circular area had cleared, I snapped another photo of it, since there was a little more light now. You can see the white remembrance flag in the center.

One of many attributes anyone facing cancer must have is courage:

It would take a while for the large number of walkers to pass through the "cattle chutes" to start the walk, and I continued to study the walkers. I thought that this guy's pink banner was pretty cool, and also chuckled a bit over two ladies walking together (one shown here) with the team name of "Fore Old Jugs."

Soon enough, I passed through the "cattle chute" and was taking my first steps on my long walk to honor the memory of my sister, and to honor all those who have had this awful disease.

Gathering for the Komen 3-Day for the Cure

On September 23, I was jolted awake at 3:40 by my wake-up call in my Arlington hotel room. I came to life quickly and shortly thereafter, had shaved, showered, dressed, and eaten breakfast. After packing and checking out, I boarded the bus at 4:45 for the 15-20 minute ride to Nationals Stadium. There, I joined several thousand others gathering for the start of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. Already, I was impressed how well organized everything was. A large team of volunteers was in place to help with information and load luggage. I quickly found the right truck to load my duffle, packed with sleeping bag, sleeping pad, pillow, and clothing and gear for the next three days. It was still totally dark at 5:15 when we all arrived, with the opening ceremony still more than an hour away. People milled around chatting with one another, checking out the three day store, and relaxing.

I walked through the small Komen store. My goal was to find a temporary tatoo for my face, but they had none. I bought 3-Day pin for my hat, and a deep pink wrist band that said "60 miles. I can do that." I asked if they had any Komen 3-Day tatoos or pink ribbon tattoos, but they didn't . But a young woman said she had a pink ribbon sticker, and kindly offered to give it to me. It lasted all day, but washed off in the shower that night. Since I didn't have anything pink to wear, I wore this with pride and gratitude. I think it looked pretty good on me.

There was a table with pink stickers. We could take one and write a message on it. Here is what I wrote in memory of my sister Ann, now departed nearly four months. It is still hard to believe after how hard she fought.

The pink circular stickers were placed on a large white wall. Ann's is on the upper right.

After resting for a bit on the ground, it was almost time for the opening ceremony. There was a threat of rain, but all was still dry. After 172 days of waiting, my three day adventure was about to begin.

My Komen 3-Day by the Numbers

The Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Washington, DC and Mongomery County, Maryland was a blast. It was very emotional at times and I thought of my deceased sister pretty continually. I miss her so much.

I'll be writing a lot of posts in the next week or so, but thought I'd start with an account of some of the numbers of my latest attempt to race for a cure. Days since I signed up: 175
Days when my left foot felt normal: 24
Steps taken during the 175 days: 2,279,560
Approximate miles walked: 1,079
Weight gain/ loss: 0 pounds
Miles of the Washington 3-Day course: 53
Approximate miles walked during the 3 days: 70.6
Dollars donated to Komen by my supporters: $8,760
Number of donors: 122
Number of honoree names on my shirt: 71
Number of inspirational people I met during the three days: far, far too many to count

Racing for a Cure Once More

Well, I'm all set! My left foot is about at 85%, meaning I still get some heel pain from the plantar fasciitis but nothing like even a month or so ago - much less four months ago! Too bad I couldn't get in a few more long walks, but I will cope. My bag is all packed. It is amazing how much stuff I had to cram in there: remember, I have to camp out for two nights and had to stuff a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and pillow in there. Friday will be a very early day, as I have to check in between 5AM and 6AM at Nationals Stadium in Washington, DC. The event kicks off at 6:30 AM. Right now, Friday could be wet but the rest of the weekend looks good. The weather will do what it will do. I plan on enjoying the experience, which will be so emotional at times. Racing for a cure again - about 53 miles, it sounds like, a tad bit short of the 60 I expected. I wish I could pick up the phone on Sunday and call Ann, tell her I did what I told her I would do five months ago, especially in her honor.

Last night, I wrote honoree names on my special shirt that I had made with my sister Ann's photo on it. Pink names for those who had breast cancer, blue for the names of those that had some other kind of cancer. It looks pretty nice, I'd say. I will wear this shirt on Sunday. Maybe your name is on this shirt, or the name of a loved one. If so, I am walking for you, for them!