Komen 3-Day Day 1 Recap

Friday, August 3, Day 1:

The day started bright and early. Ok, that’s a lie. It wasn’t bright; it was still dark, since Becca and I had to get up at O’dark thirty (as in 3:30am.) And considering we didn’t get to bed until 12:30 the night before, it was a little tough. But excitement won the day and we were both up and ready to go. For some reason, we decided we needed to be at the opening ceremony location by 5:00am, which turned out to be way early, but ended up being ok.

We're so happy we glow. ;-)

We hung around and watched the people while waiting for the opening ceremony.

And what an opening ceremony it was. I think I started to cry as soon as it started. Dr. Sheri Phillips (check her out here) is the spokeswoman for the 3-day and just the sound of her voice (not to mention the things she said) had the tears flowing. Her voice and the banners indicating all the reasons we walk made for quite the emotional ceremony.

The banners

And then, right before we started to walk, they raised a flag. A flag that contained the names of all the walkers’ friends and loved ones who have been lost to breast cancer. Yep, you guessed it, more tears.


The flag

And then we were off, walking along the lake shore and past (and under) the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and out into downtown Cleveland. The first miles seemed to go by really quickly. And without our trusty Garmin watches to track our mileage (and the lack of mile markers) we had to rely on the route cards to tell us how far we’d gone. Which to be honest, drove both of us nuts. I, and from the sounds of things, Becca does, too, really like to know how far I’ve gone and how long it’s taken me to do it. But I digress. Before we knew it, we were at Pit Stop #1, where I ate my bagel breakfast and topped off the water bottle before heading out to walk some more.

We walked through some really pretty sections of Cleveland’s metro parks, along the shores of the lake.

The Cleveland skyline

And we walked through some really gorgeous neighborhoods with some totally awesome houses. One of the parks held Pit Stop 2 where we grabbed a snack, refilled our water bottles, took a potty stop, and headed back out on the route, where we walked, and walked, and walked some more.

Lunch was in a pretty little park with plenty of trees for shade. It felt really good to sit down for a bit and rest the sore feet and legs. I was starting to get a little tired, but not too bad. We relaxed for a while and then decided it was time to head out again. We were in yet another pretty Cleveland park, with a pretty little creek. Since I take after my Dad, I tend to take pictures of creeks, so here it is:

The creek in the park where we had lunch

After lunch we started to move a little slower. Except for the big hill that had everybody scared. They were offering rides to the top, but we decided we would walk it. And it was just the push we needed to put the pep back into our steps for a bit. We charged up that hill, and managed to keep the momentum up for a little while after.

But then, we started feeling the heat again, and the pain and stiffness in our joints started to catch up to us. We slowed down a bit. Thankfully there was a lot of roadside support in the form of sprinklers, popsicles (Koolaid brand, Grape flavor, won the prize for the favorite with Becca and me), sweep vans driving by with music and bells, safety crew with bad pirate jokes, and Jerry.

Jerry was a Walker Stalker Extraordinaire. You never knew where he would show up along the route. But he was always somewhere with a big smile and encouraging words.

Me and Jerry

We hit Pit 3 and were really excited that we only had 4 miles to go. Little did we know that that 4 miles was longest 4 miles ever. We had another conversation about not having our Garmins, or some way to measure the miles. I suggested we could count our steps, but that was quickly shot down. So we just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Then we saw this:

Westlake was where camp was, so we knew we had to be close to the end!

We walked a bit more, saw the arrow that pointed the way to camp, followed it, and the crowd of walkers ahead of us, and headed into our home away from home.

We did it! The hard part of Day 1 was done! Now all we had to do was find our bags and our tent. Finding the bag was easy. The tent was a little more difficult.

We told the lovely lady handing out the tents our tent number and she says “our tent angels have been putting up tents in section B all day, so yours is probably already up.” So we take her word for it, don’t grab a tent, and head off to find our spot. After roaming through a sea of pink tents for a while, we get to the marker that says B64, where our tent was supposed to be. The lady was right. Most of the tents in section B were set up. There were only 2 empty spots. It was just our luck that ours was one of the empty ones. Sigh. Becca grabbed a “tent angel” and asked if he could get us a tent. He said “sure” and promptly disappeared. He was gone for quite a while, and just as I was about to give up on him and go get a tent on my own, he showed back up with a tent that he kindly set up for us. We got our stuff situated in the tent and then headed off to explore the camp and get our phones charged.

I was starting to feel really crummy from the heat – the sun was really beating down. So at this point, all I really wanted to do was sit down somewhere and rest. We found the Bank of America tent and found a place to sit. In some totally awesome massage chairs. They massaged your back, they had foot/leg massagers that worked all the soreness out of your feet and calves. They were 7 minutes of heaven on earth – so nice that we waited around to get another 7 minutes. I think I need to buy one, they were that good.

At this point, it was dinner time, and we were starting to get a bit hungry. Unfortunately for me, dinner consisted of spaghetti with tomato sauce or “macaroni & cheese” which was more like an alfredo sauce. Tomato sauce and heavy creamy cheese sauce - two things that my stomach cannot handle when it’s hot. I tried to eat, but knew if I pushed it I’d end up sick. So I grabbed a can of coke and a couple bags of potato chips and decided to hope that breakfast had some better options.

By this time, we were ready for the showers. We grabbed our stuff and headed off for the shower line. Thankfully, the sun was starting to go down, and it was cooling off a bit. I was kind of afraid that I’d up having to take a cold shower because of all the people. But as hot as I had been all day, a cold shower really didn’t sound all that bad. Turns out the shower was refreshingly cool and was rejuvenating. I left the shower feeling better than I had all day.

We headed back through the sea of tents to our little home away from home, checked in with family, and laid down on our sleeping bags. I spent a few minutes listening to the entire life story and medical history of the lady in the tent behind ours, but was soon falling asleep. Before 9pm. It had been a long, long day.