Okay, I did think of one thing worth writing about:
I am INCREDIBLY impressed by Maggie Haworth -- someone I haven't seen in years but who I used to know pretty well, and who served as Matron of Honor at my wedding. She's going to be doing a 50-mile run in West Virginia soon and has been doing marathons without batting an eye.
And here I was all impressed with myself for walking 45 miles in a single day a few weeks back. She's going to RUN that much.
I'm so lame.
As I said in a comment on her Facebook status where she announced her plans, I've never been much of a runner. After about a mile, I'm winded and slow to a walk. I can't blame it entirely on my anemia (hereditary) -- my sister (who served as a captain in the U.S. Army) runs miles after work and SHE has the same thalassemia trait blood that I have. It's not that I'm in absurdly bad shape -- my doctor told me that I have the resting heart rate of an athlete. I think it's largely a matter of willpower, or lack thereof. I had the willpower to lose all that weight; I had the willpower to walk 45 miles. I simply need to focus that willpower on running, if that's a goal I want to work on.
Wintry Vermont weather is coming, but I do belong to a gym with a banked 1/8 mile indoor track. I spent a lot of last winter walking four to five miles an hour on said track. I just need to step it up and set some goals -- running two miles without stopping, running three, etcetera. It'd help build cardio fitness and help build muscle as well, and muscle is something that, as I lose weight, I'm becoming ever more acutely aware that I lack.
I tend to think about only a handful of things these days:
1) work -- I've been traveling a lot or otherwise very busy 2) hoping Carole gets a job -- she's been unemployed since February 3) thinking about how badly I'd really like to clean our house and go through closets and throw things out that we really don't need, and giving surplus stuff that's just extraneous to needs to the local thrift shop or something, only I can't because I'm not actually home to do any of it 4) losing weight -- I have a goal to get down to 180 pounds by New Years and I have to stay ahead of my goal because next Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving. Not that I plan to gorge -- but it's next to impossible to count calories at a restaurant where about the best you can do is guesstimate the portion sizes and pray they didn't use too much mayonnaise in the salads and stuff.
Pretty damn boring stuff, isn't it?
I can't really pontificate about any of those because it'd just come across as pointless kvetching. So instead I say nothing -- but I will add that I have absolutely no idea how people my age who have kids manage to balance work and life. It's damn hard as it is with just an unemployed spouse to try to keep active and motivated.
I've got my Windows desktop screensaver set to shuffle every single picture we've ever taken with any of our digital cameras. Usually this produces an interesting blend of the sublime and the banal, but just now I came back from getting a fresh cup of coffee, sat down, and before I could touch my mouse BAM the display popped up a huge, vivid, full-color photo of Carole's surgical incision from shortly after her December 2004 back surgery. (She had me take daily photos so she could see the healing in progress.)
Very short little video that shows me walking onstage at the closing ceremonies of the 2009 Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day carrying the FOR MY WIFE flag.
Followed by my wife Carole holding the FOR MY HUSBAND flag.
Followed by a friend, Sandy Bryant, holding the FOR MY PARTNER flag. She woulda held the FOR MY SISTER flag but that one was spoken for.
Thanks to everyone who supported my wife and me in the Philly Breast Cancer 3-Day last weekend. Actual real thank-you cards will be going out soon -- but I was home for about eight hours after the walk and then had to jump on a plane to Portland, Oregon. This weekend I'm going down to Los Angeles. Hence: the cards will go out when I get home later next week.
All told, my wife and I raised around $7,000 for breast cancer research, prevention, and education. We're extremely grateful to everyone who donated.
The event itself was sort of a bummer -- the organizers waited until late Thursday afternoon and saw the weather get worse and worse and worse, 40 degree weather, driving rain, gusty wind, and so on -- and realized that there was NO WAY they'd be able to take care of 2,500 hypothermic women and men who might not be dedicated camping-out types and who might not be able to just drop everything and go buy a complete set of heavy-duty cold-weather rain-gear, the sort you'd expect to see people wearing to go squat in a hunter's blind for ten hours on a rainy November day. And they outright cancelled the first two days of the walk. First time they've ever had to do that -- seven years and 15 events a year, and they've never had such bad weather for a walk.
So, to make the best of a bad situation, a lot of people took part in informal walks around inside the King of Prussia Mall and the Willow Grove Park Mall for two days, confusing the hell out of some shoppers, but at least getting to bond and stuff, and the "3-Day" turned into a one-day. Sunday, thank God, wasn't too bleak; it rained in the morning and then let up in the afternoon and the temperature never really got above the mid-40s, but only a few people got hypothermic.
My little team had a good time, but nonetheless, we really wished we'd gotten to do the full distance. Six months of training walks and all we wound up doing was around 16 miles. :( In the end, though, the event raised something like seven MILLION dollars for Komen's programs and research grants and that's got to help -- and when you add in the other fourteen cities it's gonna be a LOT of money. We hope it makes a big impact.
We're already planning for next year, though. My wife and I are both gonna crew the July 2010 Boston 3-Day, and we've signed up to walk the October 2010 Tampa Bay 3-Day (http://www.the3day.org/goto/quicksteppers will take you to our team page if you want to sign up to walk or want to sponsor us). I've got lots of relatives in that part of Florida and maybe we'll do some diving beforehand and turn it into a little vacation. 'Course, with my luck a late October hurricane will come through.
Sad news: due to torrential rain (although it's let up for a few) today and in the forecast, severe gusts, and temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s predicted for both Friday and Saturday, the Breast Cancer 3-Day in Philadelphia will now be a one-day only event, just the final leg from Fairmount Park to the Navy Yard.
We've got a LOT of sad, dejected people here having to make frantic hotel arrangements for the two nights they expected to spend in camp -- now it's a decision to hotel it and kill two days in the city OR just shrug and head home. If, like a lot of people, you flew here from the West Coast or Rockies or whatever, "heading home" ahead of schedule ain't gonna be cheap.
Like I said, sad news. Very frustrated people, but mostly we all understand. Now we're in a position of just praying like crazy for the bleak forecast on Sunday to improve -- or who knows, we may not get to walk at all. Wish us luck.
““Hi everyone this is Jay. It's Wednesday evening. 2 days before the Philadelphia Breast Cancer Three Day. Carole and I are checked in to our hotel in the northwestern part of Philadelphia. Tomorrow we go pick up our friend Sandy Bryant and then we hang around for a bit before we go to the opening ceremony location to practice the flag bearing part of opening because all 3 of us, we're in opening and closing as flag bearers, which will be pretty cool. On the other hand we have something not to look forward to: potential rain and wind are predicted for Friday and possibly as well on Saturday and Sunday. People are using phrases like ‘nor’easter.’ I've been kind of in denial about it, hoping that it would be raining anywhere but here but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. Tonight we went out to our local Eastern Mountain Sports location and bought a whole bunch of heavy weight Techwick walking clothing, the kind that’s bulky but very very warm and we're hoping that get us through even though it may be 40 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds and there's rain coming down during the day. I'll make it because I'm tough but it's gonna be a lot harder for those who aren't used to, you know, hiking in the rain and especially those who don't camp a lot, so we're hoping for as little rain as possible so that everybody can have as good as experience as possible. So if you're listening to this please cross your fingers and say a prayer for us -- we really could use it. Thank you all for supporting me on the 3 Day. Carole thanks everybody too. And we hope that we do you proud by walking every foot of every mile of this 2009 Breast Cancer Three Day.””
In May of 2008, I tipped the scales at somewhere between 235 and 238 pounds.
I'm 6'2".
That gave me a BMI of 30.6. Obese. All those years of traveling for work and eating room service meals and chain restaurant meals and never really counting the calories had not been kind to me.
As of today, October 9, 2009, I am not obese. Nor am I overweight. In the last year and a half I have dropped 40+ pounds. And just now, weighing myself after work, I weigh 193.8. That gives me a BMI of 24.9... south of the 25.0 boundary for the first time since, well...
1995.
Jeebus.
I owe the weight loss to miles and miles of walking to get in shape for the 2008 Washington, DC Breast Cancer 3-Day and the 2009 Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day, to stickk.com, and to My Daily Plate. Stickk.com gave me a powerful incentive to keep honest about my calorie consumption and My Daily Plate gave me the tools necessary to track my meals and snacking and exercise. And, of course, the Breast Cancer 3-Day gave me a hell of a good cause to support in addition to the exercise that helped me do this.
I can't really stop now -- I don't want to teeter on the edge of overweight and know that all that stands between me and a BMI north of 25 is a big plate of nachos. But still... it was DAMN good to climb on the scale today and look down and see THIS:
It's a week until the Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day. A week until my wife, my college friend Sandy, and I will walk sixty miles rain or shine, along with several thousand new friends... every one of whom had to raise a minimum of $2,300 to take part. Every one of them is walking for a reason. It varies from person to person, but in the end, it comes down to this:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
(1 Corinthians 13)
We walk because we have faith that a cure can be found and that we can make a difference with the funds we raise and the awareness we help create. We walk because we have hope. We have hope that with each passing year we will find ourselves attending fewer funerals and celebrating more survivors. But most of all, we walk because of love. It may rain and pour on us every step of the way, and we may be soaked to the bone, but we won't care. Love always hopes, love always trusts, and love perseveres.
Carole's 39th birthday is tomorrow, October 8. And predictably, I've continued my pattern of being out of town on the happy day. I don't manage it every year, but the almighty dollar requires me to be where our customers need training, WHEN they need me to be there. If all goes well, I'll arrive at the Burlington airport tomorrow night with about an hour to spare before midnight, but what with waiting for baggage and then driving home (a half hour) it's going to be tight. I'll probably walk in the door and say "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" as the clock is clanging the midnight hour.
I'm in Des Plaines, Illinois, for work. I fly home Thursday night -- arriving late, unfortunately, but one takes what flights one can get. Thursday is Carole's 39th birthday but I don't know if I'll get home by midnight. Either way, celebrating will have to wait until Friday evening. I have no idea what we'll do -- in past years she's found the idea of going from one downtown Burlington restaurant or bar to another downtown Burlington restaurant or bar until she's had three or four drinks and three or four appetizers exciting. (On my diet, I expect I'd be having a diet Coke or something and watching her partake, but I'm serious about getting below 195 pounds.)
This weekend is supposed to be sunny, but this many days out that doesn't mean a thing and I'm assuming we'll have torrential downpours. Regardless, we need to get in a training walk to stay loose because that'll be the one-week mark... one week before the Breast Cancer 3-Day in Philadelphia.
Next week I'm doing a three-day workshop via WebEx with an east coast customer, so no travel, and that's cool because we'll be leaving right after work on Wednesday to drive down to North Brunswick, New Jersey. The following morning we have to get up and keep going another 90 minutes or so to Philadelphia to pick up my friend and Breast Cancer 3-Day teammate Sandy Bryant from the Amtrak station in downtown Philly.
We've got to all be in Philadelphia on Thursday even though the 3-Day doesn't kick off until Friday (EAAAAARLY) because we're all going to be flag-carriers in the opening and closing ceremonies and that means they need us to show up at the tail end of the Crew Day training to be walked through the routine for opening and closing. I did opening last year, which was a lot of fun, but this year we'll all be involved and we'll be doing both opening and closing, which will really be all sparkly and stuff. We don't actually have to be in Willow Grove, PA for the ceremony training until 3:30 pm so we'll probably go get lunch somewhere and then go take Carole to see the Liberty Bell or something before heading on out to our hotel and the location for opening.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we'll be doing the Breast Cancer 3-Day. If you're anywhere near Philadelphia and would like to come out and cheer the walkers on at opening, closing, or anywhere along the route, you can read all about spectator opportunities here:
Sunday night we'll be among the tired souls who take a shuttle back to Willow Grove, a long way from closing, because that's where we'll have left our car and that's where we'll be staying the night before rising early on Monday to drop Sandy back at the train station and heading back to Vermont ourselves.
And then Tuesday morning, early, I hop planes to Chicago and then Portland, Oregon so I can spend the balance of the week in scenic Beaverton with one of our customers out there.
Whee!
In the meanwhile I've got to remain vigilant on the whole losing weight thing. I have no damn idea at all what I weigh right now because the Hilton Garden Inn I'm in LIED to me, LIED LIED LIED, when they said that there was a scale in the fitness center. There wasn't. Every square inch of floor was taken up with exercise equipment so there was nowhere to put one, for that matter. I weighed 198 Sunday morning and I've been a good boy so far this week, sticking to my 1450-1500 calorie diet, and with any luck when I get home on Thursday night I'll have dropped some more. Got to keep my consumption of birthday cake to a minimum because I'd really, really like to be at 195 on Sunday morning for the final weigh-in under my current stickk.com contract (http://www.stickk.com/members/commitment.php/cid/49577). Proud to report I didn't fail to make my goal weight even once during the contract period -- and rendered the whole question of the George W. Bush Presidential Library getting any of my money moot by reaching my original contract goal when the contract was only just half over... and then kept on heading down.
195 is my 'new' goal weight despite my 'contracted' goal weight of 210. I can't change the contract in midstream but 195 is what will cause me to race out of the house and run laps in the driveway going WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP if I get there. For a 6'2" man, a weight of 195 means a Body Mass Index of 25, and 25 is the point at which you're no longer "overweight".
For safety's sake, though -- I mean, we all know how it's supposed to be so damn hard to keep weight off after you reach a weight goal during a diet -- I can't stop there. I need to get down to 190 or 185 and meanwhile, post 3-Day, really start on building muscle tone in the upper half of my body. My legs are in pretty good shape thanks to all the long distance walking.
So anyway...
Life could be a lot worse. In fact, right now about the only thing that's a major bummer in my life is that Carole's state unemployment ran out without her finding a job and now she's on the federal extension unemployment insurance, and I have no wish to trust that THAT will last forever. She's had interviews recently and I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but she's had really positive interviews in the past and still gotten the Miss Congeniality award -- the call that says "we've made an offer but if they don't accept the job you're our runner-up."
You've got two days to make a nice little difference in someone's life. If you have a friend or family member or co-worker walking in the Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day, you can send a note or card to them at the 3-Day campsite provided you get it postmarked by October 6.
Trust me: when you've just walked twenty miles and are stumbling stiff-leggedly around camp, it's awfully nice to stop by the Camp Post Office tent and find a card from someone back at home cheering you on. My friend Sandy Bryant, who's walking with me in Philly, is giving up her 45th birthday to walk to 3-Day and I know she'd appreciate a birthday card or two! My wife's 39th birthday is October 8, a week before the 3-Day, and you could always send her a belated birthday card or just a WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP YER AWESOME note of some kind. :)
Send letters to: Breast Cancer 3-Day Camp Post Office ATTN: INSERT NAME OF PARTICIPANT P.O. Box 609 Montgomeryville, PA 18936
Envelopes only, please. No boxes or large packages. Mail must be postmarked no later than October 6 in order to ensure delivery at the Breast Cancer 3-Day Camp Post Office. Any mail that is not retrieved by the participant by October 30 will be destroyed.
Thanks to some really incredibly generous people, my little team of Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day walkers (me, my wife Carole, and my college friend Sandy Bryant), has exceeded the $10,000 goal we set for ourselves. Each participant has to raise $2,300 or more to take part in the event, so on average we've exceeded that minimum by a thousand dollars. We couldn't have done it without some awfully nice people digging deep in their pockets... and I'm all the more grateful when I consider how hard times are for a lot of people.
I also set myself a personal goal of $4,000 and made that goal today, a short time after our team goal was reached. And, again, I'm just incredibly grateful. Every penny counts and I know that $4,000 will help get us a bit closer to a cure, pay for prevention efforts and education, and as I keep reminding myself, maybe just pay for a tank of gas to get a vanload of women to a mammography center that they otherwise couldn't afford to travel to.
I love to bake, even though I don't need all the carbohydrates on the diet I've been on.
Tonight I used my King Arthur Flour pain de mie pan and whipped up some dilled sourdough using sourdough starter and my favorite flour, King Arthur Flour's "Sir Lancelot" high-gluten flour (makes for a dense, chewy loaf). I enjoyed the outcome -- and probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd made the loaf the slow, old-fashioned way: without using bread yeast and instead letting the bread rise slowly and develop real sourness in the refrigerator overnight. But I can't complain.
Two weeks from today my wife, my college friend Sandy, and I will begin the Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day along with 4,000 or so new friends, all walking for a single purpose: to raise funds and awareness for the fight against breast cancer. We'll walk sixty miles in three long days, spending our nights camped out in bright pink two-person tents, drinking Gatorade until our blood turns lime green, all looking forward to the finish line.
But the finish line we're looking forward to isn't an arbitrary line drawn in a parking lot at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It's the day when everyone has access to genetic testing to find the markers that indicate a higher risk for breast cancer. It's the day when everyone has access to tools to detect breast cancer in early stages. It's the day when everyone diagnosed with the disease can confidently expect a positive outcome rather than years of struggle and 'chemo brain'. It's the day when we find the cure!
The money donated on behalf of participants in the Breast Cancer 3-Day doesn't go to feel-good publicity or huge administrative costs. It goes to two organizations that have made enormous contributions in the fight. 85% goes toward Susan G. Komen For The Cure. Every advancement in breast cancer research, treatment, education and prevention in the last 25 years has been touched by a Komen for the Cure grant. The remaining 15% goes to the National Philanthropic Trust's Breast Cancer Fund, which helps support community based programs which offer education, prevention, screening, and care in towns and cities across the USA.
Perhaps the $50 you donate won't be the tipping point that takes us all the way to the finish line, but it will help pay for a research trial. Or development costs of a new imaging device. Or... just maybe it'll pay for the tank of gas that gets eight women from a rural town to a distant hospital where they can get mammograms. Every bit counts and every bit helps. And everyone deserves a chance at a full and happy lifetime.
Our team, the Quick Steppers, has a goal of raising $10,000 for the Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day. Today, exactly two weeks before the walk commences, we're exactly $530 short. And I've got a personal goal of raising $4,000... and today, I'm exactly $501.38 short.
We need your help and I'm willing to make a sacrifice in order to get it. If we raise the $530 between now and a week from today, October 9, I will shave my head and walk the 3-Day bald as an egg. (I'll even post a video of the head-shaving so you can all see proof that I went through with it.) And I'll tell you what: if I get all the way to $5,000 -- $1,000 more than my personal goal -- I will KEEP my head shaved for a YEAR.
And I live in northern Vermont, folks. I *need* that hair to keep my brains from freezing during our long winters.
But I'll do it... if you help us out. You may not be out there on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love with us as we walk the 3-Day, but you can be right there alongside us as we all work together to reach that ultimate finish line: the day we can say that we live in a world without breast cancer.
The Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day is only 20 days away.
I'll be will be walking sixty miles in three days with my wife, Carole Furr, and my friend from college, Sandy Bryant! I'm looking for people who wouldn't mind sending notes or postcards of encouragement that will be delivered to them at camp the first evening. If you'd be willing to help out, the deadline to mail cards or notes is October 6, and the address is:
Send letters to: Breast Cancer 3-Day Camp Post Office ATTN: INSERT NAME OF PARTICIPANT P.O. Box 609 Montgomeryville, PA 18936
Just got home from Temple, Texas. Spent all day getting home. Sigh.
Anyway, I weighed myself on the super-enhanced digital scale here at the house for the first time in a week. I was hoping I'd have lost a pound or two on my 1600-calorie-per-day diet (see http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/diary/who/jayfurr/ for a complete breakdown of everything I've eaten in the last ten days or so) but when I stood on the scale, WHOA!
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jayfurr's journal
accomplished
thankful
ecstatic
hopeful
restless
determined
calm
tired
chipper