Small Strokes Big Oaks

Iconic Avon Walk for Breast Cancer banners and signs

The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is something my mom and I have done every year since I turned 18 and was old enough to walk.  (Well, we took one year off, but that was because I was starting my very first teaching job and moving away from friends and family and needed to take a year off to focus on that.)  It’s something that we work very hard for – we each have to raise at least $1,800 every year, and we must train to walk 39.3 miles over the two days – and something that we both really look forward to.

As you can imagine, the weekend is always very difficult.  Think about it: We’re on our feet, walking, for at least 7 hours each day, maybe more.  Our feet hurt, our muscles hurt, and we’re outside, so very often we’re subjected to some nasty Chicago weather.  The majority of the years we’ve walked, we’ve been lucky to have very nice weather, but this year, we weren’t so lucky.

On Saturday, the weather report on my phone stated that, for the majority of the time we were

Me in a rain poncho, making a pouty face

walking, it was at least 85 degrees with 75% humidity. This meant that we were dripping in sweat and probably very dehydrated no matter how much water we drank, and it also made it very hard to breathe.  Even though I was scheduled to walk 26.2 miles on the first day, I only made it 16 miles.  Astoundingly, it took seven hours to get through 16 miles because of the weather, the amount of people, and the rough terrain (due to the massive rain, much of the sidewalk areas were flooded).  After seven hours of walking and being on my feet and being rained on and trying to breathe in the humid air, I couldn’t go a step further.  I really wanted to keep going, but my body had reached its limits.

It had stopped raining by the time we reached camp, but the bad weather stories don’t stop there.  On the Saturday night of the walks, we always stay in tents in Warren Park.  These tents aren’t the heaviest things in the world, but they’re good at keeping out rain.  Usually.  This Saturday night,

The tents that were later blowing around in the wind

there were very strong winds in the area – tornadoes touched down near the area where I used to teach, which isn’t that close to where we were, but close enough that the storms in Chicago were very strong.  We were sleeping in our tent when heavy rains started.  Then the winds started and the temperature dropped suddenly to about 50 degrees.  Our tent was blowing around pretty violently in the wind, and all of a sudden, the rain cover blew off of the tent, leaving just a mesh top.  The rain was so heavy that all of our gear – our clothes, our sleeping bags, everything – was soaked by very cold rain.  We ran outside to try to secure the tent, which worked for a while, but the winds kept blowing and the top kept coming off.  After about the sixth time we had gone outside to try to secure the tent, we were so cold and wet and defeated that we called Tim to come get us and bring us home.

It was 2:00 AM by the time we got back to our home in the suburbs.  We were cold, wet, hungry, and all around defeated.  We talked about it for a while and realized that there was just no way that we could wake up in two hours and drive all the way back to the north side of the city.  We were forced to miss the second day of the walk.  You can’t even imagine how sad we were; the second day is by far the best day, and this was something we had worked for and looked forward to all year.

Me and Tim - the wonderful guy who drove in to and out of Chicago 6 times this weekend

We both went to bed, but didn’t sleep much.  At 6:30 in the morning, the sky was clear and the birds were chirping and we just felt awful.  If it were pouring rain in the morning, I imagine we could have moved on; we would have been disappointed to miss day two, but glad to be out of the rain.  But it was a beautiful day.  So, having not slept at all, we decided to get back out there.  Tim (who drove us to Saturday morning’s start at Soldier Field, picked us up from the camp at midnight on Saturday, and who also picked us up from the finish at Soldier Field on Sunday) raced us up to the second day’s start and dropped us off.  We were a little late, but we were there, and we finished the full 13.1 miles on a beautiful day!

Now, I’m still exhausted and sore and I feel like I might never eat enough food to make up for the calories I burned this weekend, but I feel good – better than I usually feel after the walks.  So many women and

Me and Adam (an Equality 101 Editor and longtime friend) - he meets us at lunch every year

men on this walk had survived breast cancer, or were battling it as we walked.  What was some rain and a broken tent compared to a cancer diagnoses?  These amazing women and men wake up every day and battle cancer, and the least we could do was finish the walk to raise awareness and money to help early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of this terrible disease.

I learned so much on this walk this year.  I learned that, even when I feel I can’t go one step further, I can, and I will – both physically and metaphorically.  I learned that doing this walk every year – and doing it with my mom – is more important than I had previously realized.  I learned that I am more passionate about breast cancer research and treatment than I had previously realized.  I learned that giving up is not an option.  And, most importantly, I learned that, through doing this walk year after year, that we are more strong and more powerful than we often give ourselves credit for.

The Closing Ceremony - just before it started raining again