Can You Walk For 3 Days??!!

We (my husband, Jeff, walked with me) arrived in Boston Thursday afternoon after an 8-hour drive from Virginia. We had an excellent nights sleep in a king size bed and bathroom with flushing toilet. For the next three days that was a luxury.

We were up at 4 am and living our Million Dollar Dream (?)! Making a life changing decision to join the home based business industry and we had the freedom to support the 3-Day 60 Breast Cancer walk.

We spent the first day strolling through quaint New England towns. The walk was beautiful, but very hot. It peaked at 104. On Friday we walked 21.5 miles. We had eight official stops for water, food, potty breaks, and lunch. During lunch, I aired out my feet and changed my wet socks. Everything about me was wet from soon after I started until the last mile.

Walking the 21.5 miles was a challenge but we had a lot of support. The local fire department in Natick came out and helped us cool down by spraying us down as we walked past the fire station. The local neighbors and businesses also helped along the way. They provided us with water, cheers, rest rooms (other than port-a-johns) and encouragement.

The 3-day staff did an outstanding job providing help and support for the walkers. They provided crew all along the walk that helped with traffic, medical assistance and encouragement. If a walker decided they could no longer walk, pickup vans were provided to pick up anyone requiring assistance You signaled you required assistance by crossing your arms across your body and standing on the curb.

The walk was not based on speed, but endurance. I was not a fast walker, but I kept going. Jeff and I walked the entire 21.5 hours. It took us 11 hours to arrive at the base camp. The base camp was set up at a local Vo-Tech school.

The 3-day organizers were very safety conscious. We logged in and out by the bar code on our name tag. The 3-day crew knew where the whole group was the entire day.

After we arrived back into the base camp we had to set up our tent site. All the walkers, crew and staff slept in 2-person 6 X 6 PINK tents. We had to set up our own tent. It was really interesting to watch a 1000-tent city grow tent by tent. Some of the walkers decorated their tents with everything from A to Z. It made it easier to locate your tent along the other 1000 PINK tents.

The showers were the biggest problem for the women. One of the rules was you could not take a shower until after you had eaten dinner. People had fainted in the shower in the past and have to be carried out without any clothes on. Since of the 2000+ walkers, crew and staff, only less than 200 were men, there were many more women lining up. The first night there was a one to two hour wait for the showers. I gave up and went to bed dirty.

Friday night we had a little excitement. We were already in our tent sleep. All of a sudden I heard all this noise. The crew was blowing horns to wake us up. We were asked to file inside the school. There was a lighting storm threatening and the local fire department did not want us inside the tents. What they failed to realize the area designated would not hold all the walkers and crew, and worse yet, the school had been closed so the air conditioning was off. (Remember, it had been 104 that day!) We sat outside the school until we were allowed to return to our tents since the storm never developed in our area .

Back to bed we went. We had to be up and out of the base camp no later than 7 am the next morning. See my two day article for the continuation of this million dollar dream.

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