Finally, we are less than a week away from the start of the Komen 3Day for the Cure, the 60-mile walk for breast cancer research and awareness than Jane and I are taking on in Chicago. I did my last long walk yesterday — 10 miles — and I am more than ready to get going. Andy and Tomas are eager for me to get going, too. Last week Tomas said, “Mom, do you think you are overthinking this?” Gotta love that kid.

I probably am, from the stuff I need to take to how I’ll pack to whether I’ll be in good enough shape to finish without misery. Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about.

First, I have really enjoyed having a big, audacious goal — like walking 60 miles — to train for. Not that smaller, incremental goals aren’t great (hey, I help run the St. Mary’s Annual Fund, after all), but I have realized that a certain kind of motivation for me has always come from thinking about doing something I wasn’t really sure I could do. Like help run the St. Mary’s Annual Fund (now that I think of it). Like trying out for field hockey in college. Like singing a solo in church on Sunday. I enjoy a challenge, obviously. But I am surprised how much I enjoy a BIG challenge.

Next, I am awed and touched by the number of my friends and family who have supported me by donating to my walk. As I write this, I have exceeded the required fundraising goal by more than $1,000 — I am currently at $3,410, thanks to all of you. (Click HERE if you’d like to add your support to my Donor Honor Roll.) I know that what you support with your money says a lot, and I am truly grateful for everyone who is “with” me on this walk. (Including Buster Caywood, our dear friends Mary and Dave’s golden, who was the very first donor!)

I have realized in the last few weeks that as people ask about the specifics of our walk, I have left out a key piece of information: We will be SLEEPING IN TENTS every night. Yep, after we walk 22 miles on Friday, we’ll pitch our pink Komen tents, head off to the showers they set up for us in semi-trailers, and sit down at picnic tables for our hot dinner. My race credential, which I downloaded Friday, has my “tent address” on it. So the challenge of this event is as much the camping as the walking. Above you’ll find a (not very good) photo I found of the tents at a past event. I can hear you all laughing at the thought of Jane and me sharing one. Me, too.

My last thought for the day, before I head off to round up the last of my event equipment: I sure do miss my mom. I don’t think about her every day any more, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of her often, and getting ready to do this event has brought me close to tears — again — much more often than usual. She’s been gone more than 23 years now, but some days it still seems like last week. I have SO many questions I wish I could ask her, from the silly — was I as goofy in 7th grade as Tomas sometimes is? Should I spend the money to fix my front teeth? What should I make for dinner tonight? — to the profound.

Breast cancer has taken SO many good women and men too soon. Each week I hear about someone else who is fighting — Rachel, I am thinking of you — and I feel like doing this walk, raising this money and awareness, might make a difference for them.

More details before we hit the road … and maybe some photos of the intrepid walkers themselves. Thanks again, everyone, for your support.

When I tell people I am going to walk 60 miles in a couple of weeks for breast cancer research and awareness, they often shake their heads. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it’s been near 100 degrees in Memphis for the last few days (I walked 10 miles yesterday morning before it got too bad), but sometimes you can tell people think the whole idea is sort of goofy. Like, what am I trying to prove, anyway?

I don’t know Diana Nyad, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t think that.

You see, Nyad is a world-record-holding marathon swimmer, who, after 30 years out of the water, is about to attempt a swim she failed at when she was (much) younger — 103 miles from Cuba to the Florida Keys. Without a shark cage. It’s going to take 60 hours. The best part: Nyad is 61. (That’s Diana’s little arm, stroking out of the water, on one of her training swims, from a photo that ran with the New York Times story about her quest. Her training swims last NINE hours. I love this photo.)

I am completely taken with Nyad’s challenge, and have been thinking about her nearly every day, as I drag myself out of bed at dawn to walk.

“Why would she want to do that?” asked Tomas today when I told him about her. I guess it is pretty difficult to explain why someone wants to do any endurance event, even one as (relatively) tame as walking 60 miles for breast cancer.

But here’s why: To prove that you can still do great things, even when you are 61 (or 51, as the case may be). To get yourself in shape, to feel your body respond (I actually felt pretty good this weekend as I cruised over the Auction Avenue bridge at the end of my long walk, pouring sweat). To have a goal that doesn’t involve checking things off a work to-do list, or remembering someone else’s soccer cleats or homework. To be forced to spend time inside your own head, figuring out the big questions that are easy to avoid during regular life.

I hope Nyad will accomplish her goal, and climb out of the sea at Key West, into the arms of her friends. For some reason, I feel like she has a much better chance at 61 than she did on her first try, though maybe I’m just taken with her fascinating blog, and all of the details of this major undertaking.

I know one thing: I will be rooting for you, Diana, to be strong, and swim past the sharks, the jellyfish, and the doubters. I’ll be walking right along with you.

I think I’ve passed some kind of milestone in my training for the Komen 3Day, a 60-mile, three-day festival of pink that my sister Jane and I are planning to walk in Chicago in August.

I no longer worry that I won’t make it — I’ve been clipping off 17-minute miles, which is not that much slower than I run. I’ve become comfortable with being soaked in sweat by the time I get to the end of my street, a logical by-product of training in the summer in Memphis. I haven’t lost much (any?) weight, but my clothes are beginning to fit noticeably better. I’ve read much more about what this event entails, and when I found out that the end of the walk — the 60th mile — will be at Soldier Field, I started really getting excited.

(I’m almost halfway to my fundraising goal, too. Here’s a link to my Personal Page if you’d like to help me get a little closer.)

What’s different is that I have begun to use my walks to think, really think, about why I am doing this. And what comes into my head are the faces of women I knew when we were younger, much younger, and everything was about possibility. We were studying to be doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, English professors, physical therapists. We had no doubt we would be changing the world, or at least that we’d have all kinds of options. And we were having FUN. If you don’t believe me, look at those faces in the photo with this post. (That’s Pledge Night at Theta at Northwestern, circa 1979. I’m happy to say that I still know most of the women in this photo. That’s me on the far left.)

My mother’s breast cancer changed all that. I ended up being a journalist after all, but I was no longer that carefree girl in the photo. The moment she died, on Good Friday in 1988, my childhood was over. I knew it as surely as if someone had turned a calendar page, or turned off a light.

Don’t get me wrong: I still have fun. And I have been incredibly lucky to have a terrific husband, a wonderful son, great friends and good work. But I am only now beginning to realize how awfully YOUNG I was when she died, and how much I needed her experience, advice, and unconditional love. How much I still need it.

And that is why I am walking. All the way to Soldier Field.

OK, so I admit it: When Jane asked me to do the Komen 3Day for the Cure in Chicago in August — walk 60 miles in three days to raise money for breast cancer — I didn’t really think it through. Jane asked me, I was in.

Then I began to get my head around the training. I bought new shoes (and socks, the expensive polypro kind), I borrowed fanny packs from my pals (thanks, Heather and Mary), and began doing long walks. My first 3Day post, below, is all about the walking. And yes, it is a LOT of walking.

I now realize, belatedly, that this effort is about so much more than walking. In the process of asking for donations to support my walk (every walker must raise $2,300), I have had to articulate what it is that’s making me do this. I’ve had to go back to the story of my mom’s breast cancer, and remember how sick she was, how scared we were, and how each time I get a mammogram, I get scared all over again. (I’m having my yearly diagnostic mammogram tomorrow. Perfect timing, no?)

It’s about much more than being scared, though. Telling my story has connected me in amazing ways with all kinds of people from various chapters of my life. One of my sorority sisters, the dazzling Michelle Nicastro, died last fall after a long breast cancer fight, and all of us who knew her when we lived together at Theta have begun reconnecting by remembering her and her amazing life, and it’s been great. We are engineers, moms, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives … and, still, the terrific women I remember from that other life, when we were drinking Tab and sharing clothes and stories and dreams. It makes me mad that Michelle isn’t here to share it with us.

I have also been so gratified by gifts from long-ago friends from New York, co-workers at St. Mary’s, and best friends who are always there for me.

I finally realize that this is more than a 60-mile slog, and Jane and I are going to have the hot-pink time of our lives doing this walk. I don’t know if I’ll end up wearing a pink feathered tiara, but I defy you to watch this video and NOT get why this is such a cool thing to do.

Here’s a widget that will take you to my personal page, where you’ll see more about my story; I hope you’ll think about making a gift yourself. Thank you SO much for your support.

It was my sister’s idea: We’d meet up in Chicago in the beginning of August, and walk 60 miles to help raise money to find a cure for breast cancer. I had heard of the Komen 3Day for the Cure before, but had never really thought about doing it. Let’s just say that if Jane is in, I am in. Totally.

So I have started to walk as much as possible. It’s way different from training to run a race. Walking takes a LOT OF TIME. Progress is SLOW. I am not good at slow. Though thinking about the amazing friends who have donated their hard-earned money to my effort (see their names by clicking the link above … and add your name to the list!), and thinking about all of the people I love who have been affected by this terrible disease, has made it easier than I thought to get out there.

This morning I walked 11 miles, my longest distance yet. (Keep in mind that the actual event will have us walking 20 miles. For three days. In a row.) I walked on the Greenline, Memphis’s wonderful rails-to-trails project that stretches from Tillman Street to Shelby Farms. (Pictured above, the lovely section between Waring and Graham.) I have biked the Greenline before, thanks to my pal Mary, but walking gives you an entirely new perspective.

You actually see things when you are walking. I saw neat rows of corn, onions and peppers in a backyard garden. I saw a gold kitty greeting the day from her back porch perch. I saw poison ivy, trumpet vine, graffiti, dragonflies, the women’s prison, a cypress swamp and lots of friendly bikers and runners. (Though I was surprised to see that all bikers, even those moms and dads out with their kids, don’t wear helmets. What? I thought everyone understood about bike helmet safety by now.) There are funny signs nailed to a tree.

You smell things, too: Honeysuckle scents the path at 8am. Towering locusts and oaks make dusky shade, and the damp woodland smell makes you forget about the sunhat you left at home.

I began my three-hour tour (cue the theme from Gilligan’s Island) at High Point Terrace, where Cheffie’s is twinned with Charlie McVean’s adventure in motorized bicycles. I walked all the way out to Mile Marker 0 at Farm Rd. and Mullins Station (that’s the view from Mile Marker 0 in the photo). The mile markers are quite clear, something I never saw on my bike. Then I walked back.

At the end, I treated myself to an orange cream Italian ice from Mama D’s ices, just $1 at High Point Pizza. And two Advil.