It's Walkin' Time!
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Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure
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Why this, why now?
It's been years since I did a big fundraiser-athon, and I had forgotten until I saw the ads how inspiring one of these events can be.
I had done a marathon with Team in Training in 2003, which raises money for leukemia research, i.e., the cancer on my dad's side of the family, so now I think it's about time to help out breast cancer research, i.e., the cancer on my mom's side of the family.
And this time, it's no measly 26.2 miles in six hours, no sir. It's 60 miles over the course of three days. In short, this time I mean business.
The Pitch
The Komen Foundation is very good at coaching people on how to write an effective fundraising letter: "personal and powerful" are the watchwords. They also supply lots of bullet points about the huge advances that have been funded by money raised by Race for the Cure and the 3-Day for the Cure (BRCA1? They totally helped identify that.), and facts about the continued prevalence of breast cancer around the world.
So based on their very experienced guidance, I should talk here either about the fact that when I was 13 my mom died from breast cancer that metastasized to her brain, and how when I tell the radiologist how old my mom was at her first diagnosis (28!) she gets a look of pity in her eyes; or about the fact that one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer within their lifetimes. One in eight! That's crazy!
However, I'm going to buck the trend and make my pitch based neither on pity nor fear, and see how that works.
The Real Pitch
Komen says to be personal and powerful.
Every writing instructor will tell you to know your audience.
Put that together and what does it spell? Competition.
* I am attempting to raise money for a charity.
* My husband is also attempting to raise money for the same charity.
* Therefore it is a moral imperative that I raise more money than he does.
If we do a diabetes fundraiser someday, maybe we'll let him win then. But this one's for the girls, literally and euphemistically.
All in all, the 3-Day for the Cure events have raised more than half a billion dollars for breast cancer research. I need your help to ensure that a bigger chunk of that comes from me than from Greg. I don't ask much; and even if I do, come on, it's been seven years!
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Sarah's Updates
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Two checks I'd mailed in have been added to my total, so I'm officially only $37 short of the minimum I need to raise to participate!
I do still want to blow that out of the water, but the next priority--after my last $37--is to get Greg up to the minimum. Despite that single $750 donation early on, he's been trailing me almost the whole time.
Which is awesome. But still.
by Sarah Anderson on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 @ 3:16 PM CT
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This weekend we went to the 3-Day Kick-Off Event, where we learned more about blisters and hyponatremia than anyone should ever need to know. We also went to a presentation called "attack the pack," where a woman unpacked her duffel in front of us to prove it was possible to get three days of clothes, plus spares and a sleeping bag in under 35 pounds (actually hers was 25 pounds). We did miss the presentation on setting up tents, but...come on, we can figure that out ourselves, right? Sure. Nature buffs that we are.
by Sarah Anderson on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 9:22 PM CT
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A third? Fourth? Contribution by Mike, and I'm now solidly at 60% of my goal, with just shy of four months remaining. That's not so bad, really. And our now just-about-weekly 8.5-mile walk seemed even easier than usual this week, despite my toe "procedure" and the rather insistent heat and humidity. We do need to ramp up the distance a bit, though, and certainly do more of the back-to-back walks...it's just that we have class on Sunday nights, so it'd be a bear to do a big walk Saturday, a big walk Sunday, and then two hours of swing dancing. Ouch!
I have a mammogram in...an hour and a half, actually. Festive!
by Sarah Anderson on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 @ 12:12 PM CT
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Well, the thing is, see...there's no new news. I haven't gotten a single donation in more than a month (I don't think Greg has, either), and while we're still chugging along with the training, I found out yesterday I'll need a "minor procedure" on each of my big toes right about halfway between now and the walk. So that'll make it interesting.
Last week we went to a friend's MS fundraiser event, and while I acknowledge that's the way we should be getting the other half or more of our contributions, it's just not something I feel comfortable doing. Plus, wow, I'm not convinced this area could sustain even one more fundraising event. They're pretty thick on the ground already.
So, yeah. Lovely little pessimistic update, huh?
Oh, and I have a mammogram scheduled for next month. :)
by Sarah Anderson on Fri, May 28, 2010 @ 10:15 AM CT
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I got the "week 24" schedule from Komen's "virtual trainer" yesterday, and had to whip out a calendar. We really are on the official countdown!
Fundraising has kind of slowed recently, partly because I haven't really asked anyone for donations in a while, but mostly because I'm not sure there's anyone else to ask. Meanwhile, Greg reports that the wife of a coworker is the #1 fundraiser for her MS event--maybe we should get tips from her!
On the up side, the weather has been ideal for long walks lately. My schoolwork is piling up, though, so that will take priority for another few weeks. I'm counting down to the end of that, though--just 25 days left!
by Sarah Anderson on Sat, Apr 24, 2010 @ 8:42 PM CT
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If you were forced to think about modes of transport common in Omaha, you'd probably think about trains. I found out this weekend it's a great city for walking!
I was there for a conference of the Major Orchestra Librarians' Association, and the conference hotel was on the edge of a section of town known as Old Market, home to a great variety of restaurants and shops. That meant we were on the side of town closest to the river and the airport, and indeed the Riverside Bike Trail lead from the airport to the Qwest Center, all of three blocks away from where we were staying. I was surprised to see how short the distance was when I hit up Google maps just before I left, and when I saw the trails, I decided to eschew the hotel shuttle and just walk there, geocaching along the way as I am wont. The funny thing is, due to an 1877 border dispute, that 3.4-mile walk crossed two state lines. But including caching and a stop for lunch (in Iowa!), I spent maybe three hours wandering into town along the trails. When I walked back to the airport on Monday afternoon, I did a little less caching and got there in about an hour and a half. I have a rip-roarin' sunburn, but it was a good time nonetheless; certainly more fun than a hotel van.
I accidentally learned at MOLA that asking for a donation just as people are taking their wallets out for other reasons can be surprisingly profitable. I wasn't timing it that way at the time, but I might in the future--I got $60 in a few seconds that way! That and another donation this morning (thanks, Kim!) pushes me within range of $2K. My little part of the half a billion dollars Komen raises through these events.
by Sarah Anderson on Tue, Apr 13, 2010 @ 11:46 AM CT
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I got back from an 8.5-mile walk just now to discover my progress bar had been nudged over 50%! The weather has been getting progressively kinder for long walks, but as school pressure ramps up (I have a big, big test next week, for example), I'm not sure I'll have the time to spend hours upon hours out on the trail. Honestly, that's fine, though; I'm less worried about the walking than about the fundraising right now. We were talking about that on the walk today, when Greg pointed out that he hasn't really asked anyone for donations...yet he's raised almost as much money as me! Stinker.
by Sarah Anderson on Sat, Apr 03, 2010 @ 5:04 PM CT
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As a team, we've raised about a third of our goal, and this weekend we walked about a quarter of the actual distance. That's pretty darn good for more than six months out. The problem is although we can get more stamina and fewer blisters on our own, just by training smarter, we can't get to our fundraising goal alone. Please spread the word!
by Sarah Anderson on Mon, Mar 22, 2010 @ 10:18 AM CT
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Q: Why do you have extra tickets?
A: I'm an idiot. I (apparently) bought a pair as soon as they were available, FORGOT, and bought a pair as a Christmas gift. Then I got the confirmation email and thought, hmm, that looks strangely familiar. But it wasn't until the passes were mailed that I knew for sure.
Q: Why doesn't the money go to Child's Play?
A: I already gave Child's Play a chunk of change this year. Spread the love: instead of being for the childrens, just this once let it be for the boobies.
Q: Hold up: they way this works, I end up paying even if I don't have the "highest bid."
A: Yep. If my only goal here was to get rid of the extras, I would have put them on eBay. But my #1 goal in this is raising money for breast cancer research, and getting rid of the extras is just a perk. Er...I mean, giving someone the opportunity to acquire 3-day passes after they've already been sold out for months is just a perk. Yes. That's what I meant.
CURRENT (Fri PM) TOP "BID": $20
by Sarah Anderson on Mon, Mar 15, 2010 @ 9:46 AM CT
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Greg's got this college buddy, we'll call him Captain Weisenheimer, whose motto is "money's no good if you can't spend it on your friends." And he spent it, by golly. On Greg. I went from having a comfortable--nay, ridiculous--lead in the fundraising race to suddenly being behind. And you know that's not right.
I've already asked everyone I know at this point, and I'm stalled here, just shy of a third of the way to my goal. It's time to invoke the Faberge Organic Shampoo directive: everybody, please, tell two friends!
by Sarah Anderson on Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 7:50 AM CT
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According to the suggested training schedule, we should have done an easy 3 miles today. But come on, we had an errand to run about 4.25 miles away, and I had failed to get gas, and it was such a nice day, and long story short, we walked 8.5 miles.
I definitely need new shoes. Otherwise it wasn't that big a deal--we didn't collapse in exhaustion when we got back, and even Greg only needed a couple of Twizzlers en route to keep his blood sugar steady.
I'm beating Greg handily on fundraising so far--$675 to his $275. The one problem: I think I've pretty much told everyone I've ever met, and he's only just begun. So if you're reading this, please, please pass the URL along--I've still got a long way to go before I can even start thinking about the walking part!
by Sarah Anderson on Sat, Mar 06, 2010 @ 10:23 PM CT
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Komen gives you all kinds of ways to keep track of donations, not the least of which is built into this very page, but for some reason the one I'm most entertained by is a half-sheet of pink paper and a bunch of stickers. You get a sticker for going to a get-started meeting, you get a sticker for joining a team, and so on.
Well, thanks to Mike, I now get the sticker for getting my first donation! Woo!
by Sarah Anderson on Thu, Feb 25, 2010 @ 4:13 PM CT
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When buying train tickets for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn this past weekend, I had this vague recollection of feeling rushed in the past between the end of the tournament and our train home, so this year I gave us lots of time.
So much time, in fact, that we had the opportunity to walk from the hotel to the train station, rather than take the subway. A four-mile walk in New York City is a challenge for Greg for glucose-level reasons; it's a challenge for me for paranoia reasons (example: my wedding rings did not go to NY with us). But we made it with a little time to spare, with the same number of wallets and kidneys we'd started, and with only one stop to gorge on carbs.
I walk almost exactly four miles a day for work, but with a lighter pack--amusingly, my PT backpack includes two 8-pound weights wrapped in a towel, but is still lighter than the bag I carried through NY. My shoulders were much angrier about the whole experience than my legs or lungs were.
Now that the snow is starting to melt and the days progressively get longer, it will be nice to get outside for some evening walks.
And with all this talk about the walking portion of the 3-day, I have to admit there's a reason they say the fundraising is the real challenge: after two and a half weeks, I've raised precisely...nil. I'm just not comfortable repeatedly nagging people for money, even for a good cause, so once I ask once and get no response, I take the hint and back off. I would never make it in sales!
by Sarah Anderson on Mon, Feb 22, 2010 @ 3:58 PM CT
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...in a sense.
I signed up last night, started sending the begging letters around today, and tomorrow we're supposed to be snowed in. Um...awesome? Granted, the walk isn't for eight months, and ostensibly we don't HAVE to start a hardcore training regimen until 4-6 months out, but it does seem kind of funny: sign up to walk 20 miles a day for three days, then spend the weekend on the couch.
by Sarah Anderson on Thu, Feb 04, 2010 @ 3:41 PM CT
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