Last year in August I did my first 5K, a local event that maybe had 30 people in attendance. In May, I did my second 5K, the Heart and Stroke Walk. I thought that was impressive with about 7,000 walkers in attendance, but I was told that I had seen nothing yet, that the Race For The Cure (RFTC) was truly a sight to behold.
Well today was the big day...I got up early (5 am) so that I could meet my coworkers at 7:15 to walk in the biggest event ever. The RFTC in Portland, Oregon is the largest event per capita and the largest on the West Coast. About 40,000 people were there...they come from all over the U.S. to participate...it truly was an amazing site.
Since I have been on my weight loss journey, I have been doing a LOT of walking. When I first began walking, I literally could only walk a block or two before I would break out into a sweat and get terribly winded. Over the course of time, 1 block gradually turned into 2, 2 into 4, and so on. For a very long time now I have been walking 1.5 miles in just under 30 minutes. About 3 months ago, I ramped up my walking to 3.4 miles in just under an hour so I knew walking the 5K (3.2 miles) was not going to be an issue. What I was not prepared for was the massive amount of people taking off at the same time and how that would slow the pace of the walk. The group of women I did this walk with completed the event in 1:46:14 minutes, which definitely was not a record but what I gained was so much more valuable than any record I could have achieved. I learned that participating in this type of walk was not for the exercise but for the experience, the camaraderie of being part of something so much bigger than yourself.
The vast majority of those participating in today's event wore white T-shirts with the RFTC logo on it. You also saw many participants with pink sheets of paper on their backs with the names of their loved ones, either celebrating somebody in their life that was a survivor or in memory of someone they have lost to breast cancer. You also saw a much smaller group of participants, yet no less important, wearing bright pink T-shirts commemorating the Survivors, like my coworker Joce. I was overwhelmed with emotion as I would see these women, old and young alike, all in different stages of their journey, making their way through the crowd. All of these women are fighting the good fight; some of them are on the other side of their journey while others are just at the beginning of their battle. One of the most powerful moments for me was when I saw a woman in a bright pink T-shirt, probably in her late 70s, pushing an empty wheelchair through the crowd. That moment was a defining one for me. While I was crossing the finish line for the race I realized there is no finish line yet for breast cancer, but I knew that today I was helping to find the cure.
Last year in August I did my first 5K, a local event that maybe had 30 people in attendance. In May, I did my second 5K, the Heart and Stroke Walk. I thought that was impressive with about 7,000 walkers in attendance, but I was told that I had seen nothing yet, that the Race For The Cure (RFTC) was truly a sight to behold.
Well today was the big day...I got up early (5 am) so that I could meet my coworkers at 7:15 to walk in the biggest event ever. The RFTC in Portland, Oregon is the largest event per capita and the largest on the West Coast. About 40,000 people were there...they come from all over the U.S. to participate...it truly was an amazing site.
Since I have been on my weight loss journey, I have been doing a LOT of walking. When I first began walking, I literally could only walk a block or two before I would break out into a sweat and get terribly winded. Over the course of time, 1 block gradually turned into 2, 2 into 4, and so on. For a very long time now I have been walking 1.5 miles in just under 30 minutes. About 3 months ago, I ramped up my walking to 3.4 miles in just under an hour so I knew walking the 5K (3.2 miles) was not going to be an issue. What I was not prepared for was the massive amount of people taking off at the same time and how that would slow the pace of the walk. The group of women I did this walk with completed the event in 1:46:14 minutes, which definitely was not a record but what I gained was so much more valuable than any record I could have achieved. I learned that participating in this type of walk was not for the exercise but for the experience, the camaraderie of being part of something so much bigger than yourself.
The vast majority of those participating in today's event wore white T-shirts with the RFTC logo on it. You also saw many participants with pink sheets of paper on their backs with the names of their loved ones, either celebrating somebody in their life that was a survivor or in memory of someone they have lost to breast cancer. You also saw a much smaller group of participants, yet no less important, wearing bright pink T-shirts commemorating the Survivors, like my coworker Joce. I was overwhelmed with emotion as I would see these women, old and young alike, all in different stages of their journey, making their way through the crowd. All of these women are fighting the good fight; some of them are on the other side of their journey while others are just at the beginning of their battle. One of the most powerful moments for me was when I saw a woman in a bright pink T-shirt, probably in her late 70s, pushing an empty wheelchair through the crowd. That moment was a defining one for me. While I was crossing the finish line for the race I realized there is no finish line yet for breast cancer, but I knew that today I was helping to find the cure.
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