Carol: Week 18--Mall Walking At School

[This article was first published as Week 18--Mall Walking At School on Technorati.]

The still-sizzling heat and the start of school sent me and my Pink Me Out team inside for Week 18 to train for the 3-day for the Cure.

Walking indoors at our school is similar to mall walking  (minus the grannies and grandpas wearing knee highs and bright white sneakers). If you walk from the northern corner of our school to the southern corner, you can easily log in a quarter mile.

On the days we were able to walk after school, we were able to log about four miles each session. In addition to getting our exercise, it's provided us an opportunity to see parts of the school we never get a chance to, see other co-workers hunched over grading papers, and dodge the cleaning staff diligently getting the school ready for the next day.

Over Labor Day weekend, we participated in a 12-mile training walk with other walkers in our area. The training walk was organized by a Dallas police officer who was a breast cancer survivor and the leader of the Cops Against Cancer team. I believe this will be her fourth time to participate in the 60-mile walk. In addition to walking, she said she also gets her fellow police officers to volunteer to provide security and traffic control.

All in all, she's pretty amazing.

I must admit that my walking buddies and I had trouble keeping up with her.
We were also just a tad bit sore when we finished… and the next day… and the next.

Carol: Week 15 of Training: Waist Not Want Lots

[This article was first published as Week 15 of Training: New Study Sheds Light On Waist Sizes on Technorati.]

 Just when I vaguely start feeling good about myself over these training walks for the 3-day for the Cure, those warm, fuzzy feelings dissipate faster than a cool breeze on these 100-degree-plus days.

 News venues reported a recent cancer prevention study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine that the bigger your waistline the more troubles you'll have compared to those with teeny, tiny tummies. In fact, along with that spare baggage, you also carry twice the risk of dying over a decade.

Apparently waist size is more important than weight.  

As if that info wasn't enough to burn away those warm, fuzzy thoughts, the tummy stats are true even for those people with healthy body mass indexes. And even more disconcerting than that was the fact that this new study measures the ideal waist size at 35 inches for men and 30 inches for women--a full five inches smaller than the inches given by the American Heart Association.

Jeepers. I don't need a tape measure to tell me that I fall outside the "ideal." In fact, I can't recall when the last time I was "ideal" for anything. It's all rather depressing.

According to the lead author of the study,  Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society, people should start "eating better and exercising more if you see your waist size starting to increase."Gee, thanks, Eric. Let's see how many more miles it'll take before my waist gets in line with these new guidelines.

Carol: Week 12 Kicking It Into Stupid Gear

(Article first published as Week 12: Kicking It Into Stupid Gear on Technorati.)

Sometimes I ignore warning signs, whether it's a simple telltale sigh from my spouse or something more "official" like those nasty little National Weather Service heat advisory bulletins.

Sometimes I'm a poster child for memory loss, like when I forget that the previous week of my training for the 3-day for the Cure was short on training and long on air conditioned conference rooms.

And then, sometimes, just sometimes, I'm just not the brightest crayon in the box.

Yep, Week 12 of my training found me kicking it in high gear on the stupid level.

It started on Monday when I, along with my two training buddies, decided it would be a brilliant idea to do an 8-mile walk... at 1:30 p.m. during a heat advisory. Despite slathering on sunscreen, packing lots of water, wearing light colored clothing and taking a few breaks here and there, by mile five things weren't looking so good. 

I, of course, knew the problem: heat exhaustion. I even ticked off all the symptoms to my walking buddies because, after all, I had previously written about those dangers in my Week 5 post.

Still, we remained undeterred, but things started getting ugly at the six and half mile marker when we collapsed on a bench located, fittingly, near a cemetery.

We almost called our husbands to come and rescue us, but the thought of them taking photographs and posting our failure on YouTube was enough to spur us on.

That and the sound of an ice cream truck (as if we needed a reason to celebrate National Ice Cream Month.)

Good thing I carry around an emergency five dollar bill.

Carol: Week 8--Pondering Life on Solo Walks

[Article first published as Week 8: Pondering Life on Solo Walks on Technorati.]

I walk because I want to, not because I have to.

Still, training for the 3-day for the Cure can not only be time consuming (I logged 19.5 miles), but troublesome as well.

My solo training walks leave plenty of time for introspection, and at this point in my life, I’m not sure that is a good thing with a bit more than half my life over.

That song (10,000 Stones) by Adrianna bounces around in my brain…
“My days are filled mistakes
Some that I didn’t make
I carry them around…

See what I mean?

With my trusty four-legged companion Jack, we walk and walk, and I talk and talk in the bubble above my head and ponder all kinds of things.

From mundane things like why I never went to Paris, why I can't sing or more importantly why  Oprah won't read my book.

I ponder other things as well like…

• Why we can put a man on the moon, but can’t cap an oil well that has been spewing oil into the gulf since April 20.
• Why cases like the disappearance of Natalie Holloway can't be solved and justice served.
• Why people like Dallas Police Chief  David Brown can devote their lives to public service and fighting crime and then have their only son be named the killer of another police officer in a tragic Father's Day shooting. 

 See what I mean?

Sometimes on these walks I wish  Jack could talk. Maybe he knows some of the answers. Sometimes I think  if I walk far enough, maybe some day I’ll find the answers especially to some more personal questions ricocheting around my brain.

I may just have to walk down the path of forever for that. 

In the meantime, I silently sing the chorus…

“Ten thousand stones hanging deep in my heart
No, I don’t know how they don’t tear me apart…”

Carol: Week 4: Random Acts of Kindness

Before I launch into how I'm doing, let's all give Joel a big "Hip, Hip Hooray!" for updating us on his progress. Great job!

[The following article was first published as Week 4: Random Acts of Kindness Erase Cyberspace Disappointment on Technorati.] 

With new shoes, a nifty little hip pack to hold my water and a new resolve, Week four of my training and fund-raising for the 3-day for the Cure started off well despite my disappointment in the lack of cyberspace donations.

I thought my little bit of whining in last week's post would have encouraged someone to cough up a buck or two in my direction. But, no siree, Missy. Still zero, zilch, nadda, and it didn't get any better this week.  I might as well have waited for Mark Cuban to knock on my front door offering his pocket change.

That's OK, though. Something better happened.

Kathy Seago, one of the teachers at my school, gave her classes a 24-hour Random Act of Kindness challenge –- to ask 21 people for a quarter and to donate whatever they raised to me for my walk.

Each class came to my room with their money dropping it into a big jar. When all was said and done, the kiddos had raised $400.90 for me in 24-hours.

With all the recent news about kids bullying other kids, kids sneaking inappropriate content into yearbooks, or posts about other kids slugging it out on videos, too many people often forget about all the good kids out there.

Not me. Thanks to those kids, I'm now at 72 percent of my goal--with just another $641.10 to go.  I think I probably have that 10 cents on the floorboard of my trusty mini-van.

As for the other $641, we'll just have to wait and see what the next week will bring. 

[If you would like to donate so that I may participate in the 3-day for the Cure 60-mile walk, you can do so by going here.]

[For those keeping track: Walked only 8.7 miles this week due to bad weather & storms (visit my other blog for those details). Attended three yoga classes.]

Carol: Week 3--Social Networking & Fundraising

(The following post first appeared in my column at technorati.com as Week 3: Failing at Social Networking. Yes, I am walking in the Susan G. Komen 3 day for the Cure walk. If you can find it in your heart to help sponsor me, please click on the 3-day for the Cure logo.)  

Week 3 of my training for the 3-day for the Cure ended without much fanfare and with just a sliver of disappointment. OK, make that more of a pie sized wedge of disappointment.

Disappointment--not with my training (although my job this week interfered with that. I only logged 5.5 miles and one yoga class)--but rather disappointment in the marvels of technology. Or, specifically in my case, the lack of marvels for me.

I'm three weeks into this fundraising/trolling for $2,300 so I can participate in the 60 mile walk to help fight breast cancer, and I have yet to receive even a one dollar donation from a stranger in cyberspace. I have raised 37 percent of the required amount.

I'm not sure why I'm such a failure at this. Apparently, I don't know what I'm doing. I came to that little epiphany  after the world went all atwitter about twitter erasing followers to cure a program bug. I think I have like nine followers.

My luck with Facebook is equally abysmal. I was certain my funny chicken photograph on my "Get Richie On Oprah & Save the Chicken!" fan page would generate thousands of fans for my book. Instead, the chicken page hasn't even hit a hundred. So much for counting one's chickens before they hatch.

Others don't seem to have that difficulty.  Even four self-described nerds living off pizza raised $10,000 in donations in 12 days to launch their business endeavor. The Internet is filled with such success stories.  Just not me.

Apparently though, I'm not the only one disappointed with the Internet.

My Sunday newspaper — yep, I still love the printed version of my news--carried a big opinion piece with a screaming headline, "The Internet's False Promises." (And they weren't talkin' about Al Gore either.) I'd include the link here, but my newspaper, like me, apparently isn't technologically savvy enough to get all its posts online.

I guess I'll have to keep at it the old fashioned way.

Carol: Week 2--Bliss Me Not

(The following post first appeared in my column at technorati.com Yes, I am walking in the Susan G. Komen 3 day for the Cure walk. If you can find it in your heart to help sponsor me, please click on the 3-day for the Cure logo on the right or simply click here.)


Part of the training for the 3-day for the Cure walk includes the catch-all "cross training" category. Lucky for me, the nifty little Walker's Manual considers yoga as cross training.
My yoga, however, isn't anything like the yoga mentioned in a recent article in The New York Times where people plunk down a couple of hundred dollars just for the correct attire or  take a Yoga Caribbean vacation for six thousand smackeroos. (Geewillikers, I have to practice my deep calming breath just thinking about it.)

I'm more like the "Yoga to the People" featured in the article where "this yoga is for everyone" (good), where "there will be no correct clothes" (even better) or where it seems to be OK for "the mighty and the meek, bones that creak" (best).

On May 15, yoga hits the Washington mall, marking the fifth anniversary of DC Yoga Week.  I wonder how many creaky bones will show up for that.

Although the NY Times article noted that the number of people taking yoga has dropped from 16.5 million in 2004 to 15.8 million, spending on yoga classes and yoga stuff has almost doubled from $2.95 billion to $5.7 billion.

Even without all the designer yoga frills, I know I've thrown money into that billion dollar pool on a yoga mat ($15),  pants ($20) and top ($18). (Of course, that pool probably doesn't include the billions spent on pedicures for pretty yoga toes. But if it did, I'd have to confess to another 40 buckeroos for pink toes with daisies.


And speaking of pink, let's do a ferret's on crack speedy quick update on my Pink Me Out progress for the cure…For Week 2, I walked 11.3 miles, just a tad under the suggested 12-mile goal, and for my cross training, I attended an hour power yoga session. So far, I've raised $408 of the required $2,300. If you're feeling generous, you can donate here.