Avon Walk - Charlotte, NC

We did it! Actually we accomplished 2 big goals this weekend.

1. We raised our goal of $3,600 for breast cancer research and health care assistance for underprivileged and minority women. Thank you to all our sponsors! Together we raised over $1.6 Million at this event alone.

2. Liz and I both completed the walk of over 39.3 miles! A marathon (26.2 miles) on Saturday and another half-marathon (13.1 miles) on Sunday.

You can either click the title or click here to see some pictures I took of the event.

I have so much material for this post, so I’ll probably just break it down into a couple different posts over the next couple days.

The Walk – 26.2 Miles - Saturday

I didn’t sleep all that well on Friday night. Perhaps I was just excited, or maybe I was a little nervous. In either case it was one of those night where just as you fall asleep it is time to get up. I don’t normally get up at 4:30am, but we were supposed to be at the stadium with all our bags packed by 6:00am. Generally, it takes me a good 15-20 minutes just to get moving so 4:30 seemed like a good time to get started.

Showering, packing, and eating some more of that coffee cake and we were off to the stadium where we would start the walk.

At the stadium

Imagine being just barely awake. It’s cold outside and the sun isn’t coming up for another hour at least. You walk into a stadium and suddenly it’s bright as day, there’s music pumping from a stage, and you’re surrounded by women wearing pink.

I know, I can barely imagine it myself and I was actually there. I woke up to say the least. One night perk about the even is that they took really good care of us. Given the fact that there were probably only 10 men participating in the walk out of 800 or so walkers I was worried that the portions given out for meals wouldn’t be enough. I know, thinking with my stomach again. I was wrong, all of it was all-you-can-eat. Cool.

We loaded up on coffee, bagels, bananas, granola bars and orange juice. Then everyone got down on the field of the stadium where we did some stretches and got a pep talk before starting on the walk.

Finally, at 7:00am we were off and walking. We started at what I would consider a fast walking pace though downtown Charlotte. About 45 minutes after we started we came to the first rest area. Another nice thing about how the walk is run is the placement of rest stops. They are located ever 2-3 miles. There are quick stops and rest stops. They both have bathrooms, water, and Gatorade. The rest stops also have food (usually bananas, oranges, chips, pretzels, food bars) and medical supplies where you can get a blister worked on or your ankle wrapped. They had these peanut butter and jelly graham cracker sandwiches that were incredible.

By about 10:00am we had come to our lunch stop at about the 10 mile mark. The first 10 miles were a breeze. We had been warned that we needed to be training for this event. Basically, we didn’t train. One of my rationales was that it was only walking. How much training did we really need? So, with a good lunch behind us (turkey sandwiches on a croissant with pasta salad and chips) we were off to finish this marathon. I really thought this was going to be a breeze. Oh how wrong I was. To be continued….