I left for the 3-Day on Thursday night. Walkers were supposed to report to Sesame Place no later than 6am on Friday morning and since I am not a morning person AT ALL I thought it would be best to stay at a nearby hotel. In the morning I waited in the hotel lobby by myself surrounded by packs of women decked out in pink gear who were all eager to get started. This made me kind of sad that I was alone and I was worried that this was going to be a long, miserable weekend.
Getting to Sesame Place, still in the dark, I dropped off my gear and was handed a pack of Mike & Ikes by the cheery crew guy who collected my bag. This was indicative of things to come: really nice crew people and free food! I made my way to the stage and waited, nervously for the next hour or so until the sun came up and the ceremony to start the walk began. In the meantime more and more packs of women crowded the area. Some of them were actually wearing fake styrofoam boobs on their heads. Many of them were chanting annoying boob-themed cadence chants and singing boob-themed songs. I thought to myself that if this kept up I wouldn't make it through even one day.
The ceremony was nice, a series of people talking about why they walked and coming to the conclusion that we all walk because we believe in a future without breast cancer. [For the record, over 400,000 people die each year from breast cancer. Every 3 minutes a new person is diagnosed. Every 13 minutes somebody dies. That's a lot of people.] I have to say, it was a total tear jerker of a presentation especially when lots of people around me started bawling I guess because they were remembering the people they knew who had died. I felt kind of like an interloper because I have no connection to the disease. (Thank goodness!) They also told us that Philadelphia had about 2000 walkers who raised 6 million dollars. Nice work!
Finally, about 7:15 we got started. We left the staging area and headed out onto the course -- and the whole first section was lined on both sides by cheering, clapping crew members who were handing out high fives and 3-day bandannas. (more free stuff!) It was very uplifting and fun.
The first day of walking covered 23 miles between Langhorne and Warminster. We walked through a couple of beautiful parks, and some cute towns. Spectators were few and far between except for the designated cheering stations but there were some notable exceptions like the lady in the Yellow car who kept popping up and telling us we should feel "damn good" about what we were doing and the nice lady in Newtown who set out snacks and opened up her house to the walkers so they could use her bathroom. This is a huge deal -- all we do the whole time is go to the bathroom. Porta-potties on the horizon cause the crowd of walkers to cheer with excitement. It's crazy -- but they push water and gatorade on you constantly so pretty much all the time you are scrambling for a bathoom.
I felt great all day, even towards the end when the sun beat down on us and things got a little more difficult. But over all the day went smoothly. It was so different from marathons where it's all about pushing hard and going as fast as you can. Here it was about making friends, and talking, and stopping to stretch and eat and relax every 3 miles or so.
At every pit stop along the way, the crew would wear costumes and play themed music as they provided food (string cheese, peanut butter and bagels, raisins, bananas, crackers, chips, pretzels, Pria bars) and bathrooms, and medical attention and of course STICKERS! How nerdy am I that I liked getting stickers more than just about anything?
I was back at camp around 4:00 and was one of the first hundred people to make it back. More on camping later.....
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