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As the summer approaches, I keep getting more and more excited about what lies ahead of me. I’ve never done anything this intensely physicaly for this length of time, first of all. I did the 3-day Breast Cancer walk back in 2001, where I walked about 60 miles from Fitchburg to Boston over three days, but I wasn’t toting 50 pounds of gear, I wasn’t going up and down mountains, and I had a support crew and nightly hot showers. No such luxuries await me.
Chris fondly refers to me as his City Girl, and I guess it’s partly true. I’m more of a Suburbs Girl, though. In Florida, where I grew up, I played outside all the time in my childhood. But “outside” in Florida is much different than “outside” in New England. I’ve definitely become a lot more outdoorsy, and there are some activities I love (like anything involving whitewater) that Chris won’t even touch.
Operation Shape-Up Tankbird is firmly underway. I started running back in December when my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I decided I was going to run a marathon to raise money for research as well as to give an outlet to my tumultuous emotions. He’s doing well so far and is going in for surgery this week (Wednesday, my birthday, to be precise). I have my sights set on the Bay State Marathon in October, which is a small marathon here in my local home state of Massachusetts. I’ve never run before at all, so it’s been slow going, but I’m pretty proud. I’m using Jeff Galloway’s run/walk system to get myself up to snuff, and I did 6 miles for the first time yesterday. For me, that’s huge. But there’s a long way to go. I also need to spend more time on the stairmaster to get myself ready for the hiking, you know, in between the actual hiking.
That said, all my paperwork for FFT (Fund for Teachers) is in, and I’m excited to get my check. I hope it’s this week. I have a webinar tomorrow night at 6:30 that I assume will give me more information. Then my first big purchase is my new boots to replace the Merrells I’ve worn out over the last three years. Okay, they still have some life in them, but they aren’t heavy-duty enough to survive this summer. My new ones are going to be the Asolo Stynger. These aren’t coming out of the grant, but I’m waiting until my next paycheck.
Wow, this is a long post. I’m guessing there will be a lot of long posts as I organize my thoughts around this huge expedition. My first trip is only a month away, so in the meantime, it’s just Operation Shape-Up Tankbird and (hopefully) a lot of shopping. Onward and upward!
