October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Hello!
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is also the month that Philadelphia will be hosting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3Day Walk, a 60 mile walk that I am working towards participating in (October 15th-17th). I only qualify to walk if I reach the minimum fundrasing goal of $2300. Currently I am 70% of the way there! I know that raising $2300 per participant sounds crazy steep, but it takes a lot of money to build meaningful results: clinical research, outreach & community development, and education regarding facts about the disease, methods of detection, and options for those who have been diagnosed.

It's very likely that all of us have had someone we love affected by this disease or eventually will. Latest stats say one in 8 women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. While this sounds like a terrifying statistic, there is good news: due to large amounts of money going towards research and development, the chances of a woman's survival from breast cancer is pretty good! The 5 year survival rate of women diagnosed with breast cancer is 89%! Additionally, if the cancer is found early, before it has spread to other parts of the body and remains confined to the breast, the 5-year survival rate is 98%!! But these stats won't remain so positive if we don't continue to fight.

This is why I'm asking each of you to donate $25 to my fund, though anything is more than welcomed! I'm aware of these tumultuous economic times (I've been laid off TWICE in the last year and am still currently looking for a stable job) but I started this journey and I would be completely thrilled if I were able to finish it! I won't get there without your generosity. Please go to: www.the3day.org/goto/BSmith523 to donate. All donations are tax-deductible.
Thank you so much. :)

PS - if you have friends or family that you think might be interested in donating towards the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer fund, please tell them that I am walking and suggest they donate to me. I would truly appreciate it. Thank you!

120,000 steps and 2300 dollars

I'm walking the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3Day, (Oct. 2010) which is 60 miles over 3 days. This translates to roughly 120,000 individual steps I'll be taking just on that weekend. This doesn't include the many, many training walks I have to do leading up to game day. And I've been training hard. But all that training will be for nothing unless I reach the minimum fundraising goal of $2300. That money allows me to walk.

And I want to walk. Badly. I really, really want to walk. I feel very strongly about this. The 3Day is the single largest demonstration one can do to raise awareness  about (and funds for) breast cancer and applicable treatments and research. I like being healthy and like the training for this, but I know there will come a time when I may not be so healthy. I have people in my life who've been affected specifically by breast cancer. I want to do something big and important and lasting for them and for those that have been lost, which is why I'm cultivating blisters on my feet and going to sleep sore several nights a week. It's why I'm saving up for a new pair of really great supportive sneakers, and why I'm binding and icing my crappy trick right ankle. It's why I'm setting aside many hours each week to walk, when I could be sitting around and relaxing or doing almost anything else. This is why I'll be trekking through heat, rain, chilly early mornings, on mud, on concrete, on dirt paths and pebbly roadsides. But getting to the 3Day is not an individual act by me. It's going to take a community of supporters to bring me to that finish line on Sunday, October 17th. 

And that's where you, the donor come in. I know everyone has at least one woman in their lives whom they absolutely love and adore. If you love that woman, choose to donate to my fund so I can walk for them and for you. I've had people donate $100, and I've had people donate $5, and every single dollar counts. I'm so thankful to all that have been generous to me and I hope more people set aside even a little bit to donate to me. Help me spread the word. If you've donated, let your friends and family know. Let them know they can donate to my fund as well. Donating is the easy part. CLICK HERE and support me as I prepare for those extremely important 120,000 steps this October.

Thanks!!

Fueling the Fundraising Fire

Today I received my first 3Day donation from a total stranger (a friend of a friend who'd seen I was doing this walk via Facebook). I thanked her for deciding to support me out of everyone else and she shared her story:
Her mother had recently passed away due to cancer (breast and others). She herself has put together a cancer non-profit that holds a major fundraising/awareness event each year.
And I cried when I read her email. It wasn't a long email, it was simply and matter-a-factly stated, but I cried anyway. I couldn't help thinking of my own mother and my sisters.
So this has just fueled me further. Once I've raise my bare minimum of $2300, I'm going to up my goal to $3000. If I get there, my goal will just keep rising until my walk weekend in October. It's really all any of us can do, to feel a sense of control and contribution; to at least know we're doing something to create something positive out of negative things.

Broke through $100 yesterday!

Yesterday, I broke through the $100 mark with the fundraising for my 3Day walk! I'm very excited about this. Now, at $140, I'm hoping I'll reach $200+ in the next week. According to the 3Day fundraising handbook, stats show that walkers who raise $500 in the beginning of their campaign are much more likely to succeed in raising the full $2300 (or more!) for the walk. So far, the fundraising has been totally via Facebook and I'm hoping that of the 200+ friends I asked on there that each of them (or most of them) will donate even a bit, like $10-$20, because then I'd be SO CLOSE to my personal goal!

SPONSOR ME! I'm doing something BIG for this: walking SIXTY MILES! So, if you can't walk 60 miles, or don't want to, but care as I do about continued research about breast cancer, about finding better and better treatments for this disease, and about saving lives, then donate! Larger donations can be paid out over a 4-month payment plan. Anything is more than welcomed. Your donations make you heroes! Thank you!!

60 Miles to a Cure

Ok, so once upon a time I'd attempted to walk the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3Day. Unfortunately I had had a bike accident a couple months before the walk and hurt my knee (it still smarts a little to this day. siiiigh) and had been taken to the hospital to get fixed up (Ricardo, thank you forever for being a true friend always). Anyway, I ended up not walking.

This has always bummed me out. I love to walk. I love doing good. I love being socially conscious and responsible. I like doing things with a sense of purpose, a sense of a "greater good", and this 3day walk is a legacy. Plus, I hate cancer, all kinds, but particularly breast cancer. I'm afraid of breast cancer. I've had people around me affected greatly by it, by either having it themselves or loosing loved ones to it. However, I'm hopeful of the medical strides over the past decades that have worked to bring breast cancer research and treatments further than ever before. 1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, which sounds terrible. But just a few years ago it used to be 1 in 7 women. I'm banking that in a few short years it'll be 1 in 9, 1 in 10 and so on until it's barely a whisper or maybe not even there at all. In the meantime, I can do my part, but that doesn't happen without a lot of help from others.

The walk is 60 miles long, 20 miles a day. I've never walked that far before, and I am pretty sure it's difficult. I've walked 18 miles in one day before, and can easily walk across town and back (about 10 miles) without difficulty. I'm pretty sure that 3 full days of constant walking is going to be a challenge, but I find the fundraising to be the bigger challenge. In order to qualify for the walk, I have to raise $2300 by game day, Oct. 15th-17th, 2010. So I need donations. I'm aiming to get my first donation this week, maybe even today. Starting, they say, is always the hardest part. This is true, I've found, for almost anything. But once something starts, it sort of carries itself along under it's own momentum. I'm hoping to get this giant ball rolling. If you donate, thank you so much! If you spread the word that I'm walking, thank you doubly so!