3-Day Report Day One

Ok, I know something that I won't be doing again any time soon. Don't get me wrong, it was a great experience! And the training got me healthier than I've been since college. Maybe even healthier than then. But I couldn't finish, and that was more depressing than anything I've ever experienced recently. Because 20 miles each day is a lot longer than it sounds.

If you listened to my audioblogs, you already know some of this, but I'm just going to get as much of it down as possible.

Eric and I arrived at the drop-off point early Friday morning. There was a bit of a line-up to get in, but it wasn't too bad overall. I'd say we timed it pretty well, in fact, because when we were waiting to start the Walk later, they had to delay the opening repeatedly because more women were arriving, having been caught in the massive traffic jam the arrivals caused. This was not the first instance of poor logistical planning on the part of the 3-Day, nor would it be the last.

After waiting for a while at a picnic table, the announcer asked all Walkers to go to the holding pen to wait for the beginning of the Walk. Silly me... I thought they were serious! I stood in the holding pen for what seemed like an eternity, but was only about an hour and a half. Then, after some inspirational speeches, we were off!

Our route took us out of Issaquah and up West Lake Sammamish for awhile until we were directed up a hill. It was quite a hill, too. It took us by Weowna Park, which was a beautiful area. After that, everything gets a little fuzzy in my recollection. There were streets, and sidewalks, and stopping points with food and water and porta-potties. There were lots and lots of women and a few men walking, and lots of people cheering us on. Every once in awhile we would come around a corner and I would suddenly know where I was. It was like a tiny shift in angles would make everything familiar again.

For instance, when we came out onto Bel-Red road after walking through a residential area, I suddenly knew where we were, then calculated the distance we'd come, and went into a numb state of shock.

The first few hours of the Walk were very wet. The thunderstorm that had been predicted for Friday night came through early and dumped on us. I was wet right down to my skin. The double layer socks gave me a little protection, so I didn't get as many blisters as some women, but every other bit of me was soaked through. Luckily, I'd packed my waist pack as any native Northwesterner is wont to pack, and everything in my pack save three items were in sealed plastic bags. My phone and camera weren't wrapped up, but neither seems to have suffered any lasting damage. My wallet, on the other hand, was soaked badly enough that my insurance and voting registration cards were both nearly unreadable when I set them out to dry on Friday night.

When we reached the Overlake area, there was a cheering station. I was in desperate need of some cheer at that point. We were 9.5 miles in and I was ready to collapse. I'd done a few long training walks, but I usually wasn't as wet and tired. To my immense surprise, my mom was at the cheering station. Getting a hug, and giving her my soaked 3-Day shirt so I didn't have to carry it with me anymore, was really nice. Mom's presence meant a lot to me.

We continued along into Redmond, where I got a staged picture of a couple of Walkers in front of the Microsoft Campus. My left foot was beginning to really bother me. I knew I had a blister forming somewhere on it, but it also seemed to be cramping up a little as I walked. It continued to bother me until about a mile and a half from Marymoor Park it completely cramped up. I stopped and leaned against a traffic sign and tried to hide my pain from Walkers coming up, but it was no use. I couldn't exactly say I was fine, and too many of them were too concerned. They flagged down a support van and my Walk was ended for the day at 16 miles, instead of the scheduled 17.5 miles.

Let me tell you about the support vans. They call them Sweeps, and when you get in one you've been Swept. My goal was to not get Swept. The Sweep vans are all decorated. On the first day, I got picked up by "Clean Sweep". They had brooms and broom designs on the van.

The van took me straight to Medical, so I didn't get to walk into the camp and get cheered by all the supporters hanging out. At Medical they took off my shoe and were unable to figure out what was wrong. There were no blisters, but the pad of my foot was really sensitive. However, I could put weight on it without screaming and I didn't seem to be in severe pain otherwise, so they iced both my feet for about a half hour and let me go with a warning that if it started to hurt again, I should take the van or bus to camp and not try to walk tomorrow.

I got my bag and was going to try to carry it, but as soon as I mentioned that I had just come from medical the guy at the truck insisted on carrying it for me. I didn't argue. The tents were a ways away, and my section, "A" was the farthest from the trucks.

Once I got settled into my tent, I went for a shower in the shower trucks, then dinner in the the dinner tent. When I got back to my tent I expected to meet my tentmate, or at least her stuff, but there was nothing there. It was late enough at that point that everyone should have already come in... so either my tentmate was stuck at Medical with a serious problem, or I didn't have a tentmate. It turned out to be the latter. I was one of many women who didn't share a tent.

Before I went to sleep I checked my foot again and wasn't surprised to see a blister forming between my big toe and the one next to it. I thought at that point that I knew what the problem with my foot was, and therefore would be able to fight it.

My body was in a lot of pain. Every muscle ached. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My back hurt. Even my eyes hurt. My arms had somehow been converted to lead weights attached to my shoulders. My hips felt like somebody had hit me with a baseball bat a few times. I cried myself to into a fitful sleep.