being_fulfilled

We did it! Not only did we--the three of us--each walk 60 km this weekend, but the participants in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer raised $5.6 million for breast cancer research and support.

It was an incredible, emotional, sometimes painful experience, and there are lots of pictures... I'll do a little picspam in this entry, but if I tried to post them all here, this would be a very, very long (and not at all dialup friendly) entry, so check out the whole gallery! They're not all there yet--these are just the pictures from my camera--but it's a pretty good sampling of the weekend. I'll let you know when the others are there, too.

Friday night, after we registered, we all went back to Esther and Justin's house, where the hair was dyed pink! Esther and I dyed Mom's hair, Justin and I dyed Esther's hair, and Colin and Esther dyed my hair. (And so far, I've only got the pictures of Esther's head--the others are on her camera.)



It was a very precise method, involving plenty of dye slopped all over the kitchen floor and table and more than one pair of very pink hands, given that we only had one pair of gloves, and there were two people working on each head. The end result, however, was perfect:







Saturday morning, we got up early and Colin drove us down to the Round-Up Centre, where we dropped off our gear at the trucks, got our breakfast, and waited. And waited. And waited. We were actually about 45 minutes late getting started, because there were some Porta-Potty issues, and for some reason, they hadn't been set up at the first couple of pit stops. Finally, the opening ceremonies started, and we were on our way. The loading door opened, and 2036 walkers poured out, cheering, crying, and yelling, through a gauntlet of our amazing crew, the people who would be there from the very first moment getting us out the doors to the very last, cheering us back in 60 km later.

We walked 35 km on Saturday and 25 km on Sunday, in one of Calgary's hottest weekends so far this year. People were amazing, though, and the support from the communuity and crew was one of the most touching parts of the weekend. Many houses along the route had pink ribbons tied onto the trees, bushes, or porches; people were sitting on their lawns cheering us on; kids handed out freezies or lemonade to us as we walked past; there were thank-you signs in many, many yards; people turned their sprinklers on over the sidewalks so that we could cool off (I commented that I don't think I've had that much fun running through sprinklers in almost 20 years!); kids shot at us with water guns; and passing cars honked and waved (we have friends who live just a block off the route, and they said that all afternoon, they heard honking and cheering, consistently for almost 3 hours).



One family was sitting on their lawn with a cooler full of ice and a box of plastic bags, and they (a mom, dad, and two little boys who looked like they were about 4 and 2) were filling bags of ice and handing them out, and it struck me as such a cool way to teach kids about service. This was something that even preschoolers could do, and it was something that made a difference--something where the gratification was immediate, and something that they could do themselves. Another little girl, right at the end of the first day's route, sat outside her house on her bike cheering people the last few feet into camp, asking them if they wanted to get "a lot wet or a little wet," and directing her brother to turn the hose on the proper amount before spraying us.

The crew was phenomenal. There were decorated vans (sweep vehicles) driving the route all day, picking up injured or tired walkers, communicating with the headquarters, making sure people weren't getting to pit stops too late, etc, and the crew in the vans were so enthusiastic. In some ways, that was just as hard as walking. After a while, we didn't have to act as enthusiastic, but they kept their own energy up for the entire two days, cheering us on the entire way. They sprayed us with misters as we walked into the pit stops; kept us fed and hydrated; doctored our blisters and aching joints; played songs like "500 Miles", "I Will Survive" and "We Are the Champions"; and made sure we had toilet paper and hand sanitizer at the porta-potties. There is absolutely no way that it could have happened without them.



Most intersections were manned by our safety crew (along with police officers at the major intersections), which was a pink-clad biker gang. :) Seriously. The safety crew consisted of bikers dressed in hot pink pants and black shirts, most with some other pink costume (wigs, goatees dyed pink, etc), and their bikes were all decorated, too. They high-fived us at every corner, told us how few kilometres we had to go to the next pit stop, told us how amazing we looked, and kept us smiling.



Saturday night, I got to camp at around 6 (Esther and Mom made it by 7:30 or so), and that shower was the most incredible shower I've ever taken, I think. :) Colin came by for the evening, brought Slurpees, and gave me a foot massage, and we just hung around for a couple of hours, watching the bra-decorating contest and waiting for Mom to be released from the medical tent, where she spent the evening after letting herself get dehydrated during the day. Fortunately, she wasn't one of the few who had to be taken to the hospital for an IV.



Sunday morning, we were back on the route by around 7:15, and although we weren't quite as fresh as we were on Saturday morning, it wasn't too bad. The feet seemed to feel it a lot faster on Sunday, though--I wonder why! ;o) Dad showed up at the first cheering station, wearing a huge pink gardening hat (which Mom has pictures of, so you'll have to wait to see that one...) and drove around for a while, following the route around. There were quite a few vehicles that I saw several times over the weekend, with a dad driving, and a backseat full of kids holding signs out the windows and cheering for their mom and the rest of the walkers.

(And one of the funniest signs I saw at a cheering station was a 6-year-old daughter holding a sign that said, "What's for dinner, Mom?")

I was surprised at how well I held up physically. I had my knee wrapped at lunch on Sunday because it was starting to swell a little bit, but that was more prevention than anything--I know that knee bothers me a little more than the other one, and I didn't want to actually have something happen to it. Other than that, my feet hurt, but I didn't get any blisters, and I wasn't even all that stiff yesterday morning. Esther had the hardest time of all of us, and by the end of both days, she was barely limping into camp, but she did it all on her own steam (and so did Mom on Saturday, when she was feeling sick because she was so dehydrated). None of us were even going to consider one of the sweep vehicles as an option, unless we were seriously injured.

We finished on Sunday afternoon at around 3:15, making it into the Round-Up Centre through a cheering line of family and friends (Dad, Justin, Colin, and Carl made it down to cheer us in just minutes after we finished, which was disappointing, but we went back out to see them), and then through a line of walkers and crew who had already finished and who cheered us in through the doors into "holding," where we all waited for the closing ceremonies. We got our official t-shirts (which we just about broiled in when we went back outside!) and went outside to find the guys and cheer on more of the walkers.



This weekend was a picture of perseverence. Everyone crossed the finish line, whether they'd been able to walk the entire 60 km without being picked up by a sweep vehicle or not. We walked part of the way with a woman who pushed her husband in a wheelchair the whole way--with a lot of help from fellow walkers. It looked like he'd registered for the walk and then been injured, but he was still there, and she still made sure he made it. One of the last walkers in came with a paramedic beside her, carrying her IV, and an ambulance not far behind. By the end of the walk, a number of walkers were in flip-flops, because their feet were too blistered and bandaged to put their shoes back on. Everyone walked through the Stampede grounds, through the people lining the route, to the finish line, though, and as far as I know, everyone but the few who were in the hospital walked in.

The closing ceremonies were emotional, intense, and moving, as we walked in together, cheered for our amazing crew, and honored the cancer survivors who had walked with us.



As I mentioned before, this weekend raised $5.6 million, which goes towards funding research projects, providing mobile screening units for rural areas, updating the technology at the cancer centres in Alberta, and providing patient support. The money goes to the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which, before the Weekend began in 2005, was only able to allot $300,000 annually to breast cancer programs, but has given over $12 million in the past two years, and this year, will be able to fund 30 new research grants.

Thank you so much for your support--if you're one of the many people who donated, I couldn't have done it without you, and you helped to make that $5.6 million a reality. Those of you who have sent encouraging emails, asked how training was going, or cheered us on from wherever you were this weekend, thank you. The importance of encouragement was really driven home as we walked, and the support from people who are behind us is incredible and so necessary. I couldn't imagine trying to do this alone--it really was a communal effort, and as we walked, it was on behalf of everyone who has stood behind us here.

Some of the local media coverage:

• Participants pretty in pink at third annual breast cancer walk


• Marching for hope


• Heroes' welcome for 'survivors circle'


• 60 km + 2,036 heroes = Hope


• Audio Slide Show

This was a humbling weekend--every time my feet started to feel like they were going to fall off, I'd see someone walking with me wearing a pink lanyard (signifying the fact that they were a breast cancer survivor), or someone would have a sign up thanking us, or a sweep vehicle would come by and honk at us, and give me that extra burst of energy until the next time I needed it. The few days of physical exertion--in a way that has been so incredibly healthy for me (and given me the benefit of losing quite a bit of weight recently)--is nothing compared to the physical challenge of going through cancer and its treatments and the ongoing health issues associated with that. It's almost a selfish cause--in honoring the life and memory of my grandma and the legacies of thousands of families affected by breast cancer, it's helping to reduce the chances of this disease affecting my life and family, and even more than that, greatly reducing the chances of my children's lives being affected by it, either because it affects me or because they are directly impacted.

So that was our weekend--those are just a few of the many, many highlights and triumphs, and if I happen to be in Calgary next July, I just might have to do it again. It's hard to plan, knowing that I'm moving in a month, but I may have to plan to be back here for that weekend, just for this!

And I'll leave you with one more picture of Calgary's "Sea of Red" turning into a Sea of Pink for the weekend:



Thank you!!