A Life That Was Changed...

Finally! I give you pictures of my 3-Day adventure! I wanted to use the pawprint slideshow. I mean, a team full of CCLs, how perfect would that have been?! But it cut off the photos too much, and I had to go with this theme instead. *whine*

The 3-Day for the Cure was a once in a lifetime experience for sure. It was hardly the Kumbaya-singing lovefest the 3-Day online community promotes, but it was a good experience. One I'm glad I had. I do feel changed by it. In a very positive way.

I also feel a bit lost now that I don't have it to obsess about. A good, hugely relieved lost, but lost. Like I'm forgetting to do something. Like buy socks.

Unfortunately, thanks to my size and sometimes my sugars, my pace during the walk was too slow, and I was forced on to sweep vans several times. But I was able to finish more of the walk than I ever imagined I could. I'm really proud of that fact. But I am most proud of myself for the fact that not once the entire time did it occur to me I could quit and check in to a toasty, pillow-filled hotel room. Not once. Never. Not at all. I'm really surprised now that it didn't. And pretty freaking awed about it.

Thank you so much to all my donors! Thanks to you, I was able to raise $2,560! You'll never know what your financial support meant to me, or how many lives you saved.

You didn't have much money, but you gave it anyway...I am a life that was changed...I am so glad you gave.

I also want to thank my encouragers and my prayer warriors. Everyone who asked me about the walk, who told me they were proud of me, who assured me I could do it.

And my bestest besties and phenomenal mother whose constant texts and calls got me through those three days...like Skyler, who somehow made me laugh in the midst of a pink Kool-Aid festival about the fact I'm too slow. Raff, who surprised me by not trying to talk me out of the Red Zone but telling me to kick some tail instead. Meg for sending me some medical TLC in the form of one very hot fictional doctor.

My mom for the training and travel support. Her training waned during one incredibly horrible year for her, but her support never did. She paid for a major portion of my trip. She even paid the charges for texting me encouragement! I especially appreciate the fact she was so terrified I was going to lose my diabetic feet but didn't tell me until after the fact how much she didn't want me to do this because she was so worried I would.

Thanks to everyone who played any role whatsoever in my 3-Day journey. I will never forget how many people truly believed I could do this. How many people are so proud of me. How many people have changed my entire opinion of myself with your belief.

Maybe it was a Kumbaya lovefest after all.

DEE-VINE Forecast!

Three days 'til the 3-Day!!!

The weather forecast couldn't be any better!!!

10 Day Weather Forecast for Phoenix, AZ - weather.com

One Week!

So there are only seven days until the 3-Day!

I can't believe it's that soon! When you sign up for the walk, you think you've got a couple zillion years to prepare and poof! Time zooms along as usual and before you know it, you're making a last minute list of things you need to get this weekend. Because this is the last weekend you have to prepare!

I'm alternating between levitating and fainting! Levitating over finally seeing my teammates and hanging out with them! I can't wait for that, for our pre-walk dinner, for our post-walk dinner celebration with two bonus Catsters, for our hot stone massages, for whatever geeky sightseeing I can talk them in to...oh, and yeah, all the crazy, wonderful, amazing fun we'll have on the walk itself!

And I'm so not kidding when I say this...I also can't wait to see the 823 pictures (at least) I'll take!

I'm so excited for an hour or so, terrified for ten minutes or so, frantic about all I still need to do for another 15 minutes or so, excited for five minutes, terrified...

Fat Girl Walking wrote a post that included some great advice: "enjoy what you've already accomplished."

So I have been. I've been beaming, pretty much, that I've made it this far. Logged as many miles as I have, learned as much as I have about shoes, blisters and socks, actually bought that hideous sleeping bag contraption...

I've beat myself up so much about not training enough, still not losing weight, spending too much money on this thing. But in the past week, I've reached the point of being ecstatic I've come this far. I've reached the point where I figure I'm as ready as I'm going to be, and you know, that's ready enough.

Last year at this time, I thought walking a mile was a big deal. And I did it so rarely, it was a big deal when I did. So enough miles of training or not, still 1000 pounds to lose, I've been more active this year than I've been since I was probably 16.

And that, all by itself...is pretty freaking awesome!

:O :O :O :O :O

21 Days Until the Event!

Three weeks from today.

*faint* *faint* *faint again*

Just Call Me a Cowgirl!

I wear spurs!

Or at least a spur. I wear it all the time. Because...

I have a heel spur!

Urgh.

Funny, but not really, story.

Almost this entire year, while training for the 3-Day, I've had pain in my left heel. I thought for oh...three months or so...that it was because I was so out of shape and hadn't built up my endurance. I thought it was because I switched to sandals in the summer. I thought it was because I was fat.

I tried so many different shoes hoping they'd help. They didn't. I've tried inserts hoping they'd help. They haven't.

Finally I started whining to my mom so incessantly she couldn't help but listen. "It feels like I've slammed my heel down on concrete repeatedly until I shattered every bone in it. Now it feels like that ALL the time. Weird thing is, it stops hurting the longer I walk. And hurts the most when I get up in the morning."

She informed me that's how her foot felt when she had plantar fasciitis.

D'oh!

I started googling, and yeah, sounded just like it. I googled best shoes for plantar fasciitis and found my New Balance 1200s. They didn't do a whole lot for the pain, but hoo boy, do I love 'em otherwise! I started stretching my foot, popping lots of Ibuprofen and doing everything the doctor told her to do to get rid of her plantar fasciitis. Except stay off my feet.

Didn't help a whole lot.

I finally broke down about a week ago and went whining to my doctor. He did an x-ray and informed me I have a heel spur. Whipped out the x-ray and showed it to me. OK, I'm nuts, but I think it looks pretty cool. Like a shark's tooth sticking out of my heel bone!

He said it's probably been building up for 15-20 years and started hurting so much because I've increased my walking big time.

The good news is, he told me what to do about it and said I can still do the 3-Day.

The not so good news is, he said losing weight would help a lot.

First, he gave me some supersonic Aleve or something. Gotta admit, as much as I hate taking pills and as good as I am about forgetting to take them, I'm loving this anti-inflammatory. And not forgetting it so much.

He told me to ice my heel 20 minutes twice a day, how to stretch it before I get out of bed, how to stretch it before I walk. And he told me to get heel cups or a heel cushion. The cushion sounds like the pillow one of my old bosses had to sit on after her hemorrhoid surgery. I couldn't find the cushion, but I finally found the heel cups. They're gel cups that wrap around your heels and unlike inserts, don't irritate the rest of your foot. I gotta say, so far, I'm really loving those puppies!

Admittedly I haven't walked as much as I should have this past week. Okay, I haven't walked much at all. But I've done everything I'm supposed to, and my heel is feeling much, much, much, oh so much better. I also have worn my tennies non-stop. To heck with any other shoe, the 3-Day is now days away!

Days.away.

:faint:

Hometown Hells Hills!

What do you do when stupid football is taking up all your flat walking routes?

You get the dumb idea to take a walking tour of your hometown. You do this last Saturday, and you think, wow, this is such a cool place. So beautiful. Wow. I've never noticed that before. In all these years! Wow, the Sonic bathroom is a million times nicer than I ever thought it would be. And dang, why didn't I take a picture of that hysterical new "Downtown Business Section" sign?

And just a mile or so in, it hits you.

Even the flat places in town...the places you always thought were flat in your car...are freaking Mount Everest.

And after you do the scenic walking tour, after you climb those flat hills you used to sail up as a skinny teenager...you find a rock solid blister as big as a dime on the right side of your heel, and you can't bend your knees until Thursday.

But you feel pretty dang awesome for being as fat as you are and still making it to the top of that mammoth hell hill without stopping!

Here are pictures of the hells hills and other cool places:



Our old church building. It had beautiful stained glass windows that we moved to the new building, and dark sloping hardwood floors. It was a wonderful sanctuary that would never fly nowadays, when church is less about worship and more about entertainment. I had no idea the lighting was going to turn out like this. Cool, huh?:



Heading towards the dike. When I was little, I used to live near it, so I spent a lot of time playing on it and walking across it:











View from the dike looking down at the town (aka business section):



Oh, the places you'll go!:



Getting ready to climb the hell hill:



I MADE IT!!! I MADE IT TO THE TOP! I wondered if my muscles fondly remembered the good 'ol days when my mom, neighbor and I walked five miles a day and climbed this very hell:



Break time!:



Back on flat land on Sunday, I tried out the pom pom my teammate Laura sent all of us. I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to drive me batty on the walk. I'm happy to report, it's good to go. I didn't even know it was there. In fact, I couldn't quite figure out what the woman who told me she loved my "tassle" was talking about. Anyway, one of the ribbons fell off, and I loved what it did. You can't really tell it from this picture, but it landed in the shape of THE ribbon. Coolness again, huh?:

New Training Partner!

My cat Tessa is as crazy about strolling as I am about chocolate. So the other night, my mom and I finally broke down and tried to fit the stroller in her car, so we could take Tessa on my training walk.

It worked! We had to turn the stroller--and Tessa--sideways to fit it in the car, but she didn't mind. She only yelled twice as we drove to the track.

Then she strolled for three miles before she started getting that hairball on its way look about her.





You know she's been gloating about her big adventure to the other cats ever since. ;)