Well we made it!

We I woke up at 5:30 and after getting the rest of our team up we headed up to Tampa. Of course we had to stop for coffee and a nutritious quick breakfast at Burger King. We arrived right on time to see this:

I must admit I was pretty intimidated when we first arrived and I felt so out of place. I was prepared for Tobey to have to carry me across the finish line. But...

The one-mile walk was the last of the events and we lined up towards the end of all the walkers, as I didn't want to hold anyone up. There were folks of all shapes and sizes and abilities. I just wanted to make sure that I was not the last one to cross the finish line and I wasn't especially keen on the idea of being passed up by a soccer mom pushing a stroller.

So the race started and Nappy, Chewie and I left Tobey and Simba in the dust. A little past the half way point Nap and Chew made a break for it and Tobey caught up to me and Simba was a few steps behind. And get this: while we started at the end of the line, we finished pretty much in the middle of the line which I thought was pretty dang cool. We even finished ahead of this one 'hot' guy (Simba's words, not mine), I won't mention that he had also ran the 5 mile run, but hey, we finished ahead of him! Slacker.

I told everyone that I had a mindset for the race. I was picturing that I was at the mall, at Christmas time, and all these folks were in my way of getting a bargain! Simba said that thought wouldn't work for her because 1. She had no money and 2. there weren't any actual bargains.

It felt like the walk was over before it even began. Granted it was just a mile but for someone with all of her lumbar vertabrae in some form of herniation or another, I am awfully proud of myself even if I was looped out on pain meds before the race. We all decided to participate again next year but since the 1 mile was so easy, we are going to do the 5 k which is only 3.1 miles. I have no doubt we can do it. I told Tobey we would need to start practicing walking for the race. His response was: "we need to practice walking?" Yeah , yeah. Har har.

The fundraising aspect was great. The race had over 4,000 participants, up from 2,000 last year. And by my calculations they should have raised well over $100,000 for cancer research. The best thing is that 100% of the money raised goes straight to Moffitt. And although this year we didn't raise very much money for our team , next year will be different! Go Team Walking for Jo!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was worried I would cry every step of the way. And I did get a little teary eyed a few times just seeing other walkers/runners with their "Walking in memory of" shirts, it really was a touching sight to behold and I know that Mom was proud of all of us.