Author Archives: john

Get the Kids Involved!

April 29th, 2010 | Posted by john in Fund Raising Tips - (3 Comments)

When you think of talking to people about fund raising, it’s hard not to think of your kids making noise and getting in the way of getting your message out. It’s very easy to think that you would do much better in your fund raising on your own, but you should really take a second and think about getting them involved. It’s for your own good, and theirs, that you get them involved when you try to do your fund raising for the 3-Day for the Cure, or for that matter any charity work.

As I mentioned in an earlier item, I have been doing a lot of door to door fund raising this year. When I started out, I wasn’t sure about taking the kids, but I had an unavoidable event that caused me to have to take my 4-year old son with me on the first outing that I did. I cringed a little bit at my prospects, I even thought that having him in tow might cause me to have to cut my expedition short, but soon I found that all of my fears were unfounded.

Sawyer was actually excited about going. He pointed out houses that we needed to visit and made sure to ring the doorbell at every house. I think he had an idea of why we were going to all these houses and he was extremely well behaved. In fact, when it came time that we had to go pick up my wife, he still wanted to go to more houses. He kept saying, “Let’s go to the next house daddy!” Talk about keeping someone motivated to keep at it!

The next weekend I was going out again and my wife suggested that I take both of the boys with me. I wasn’t sure about having both children in tow at once but I still went and it worked out just as well. I started giving away thank you gifts that week to anyone that donated and Jackson (he’s 8) asked if he could have the job of handing out the gifts. It worked out well, they both had a job that they enjoyed doing! As we walked, we came to one of Jackson’s friends’ houses. They then asked if they could go along with us to. So here I was going door to door with FOUR kids when the week before I wasn’t even sure about one! They all gave themselves individual jobs.

With all this going on, I didn’t notice a few really neat things. First, as I went to people’s doors they definitely took notice of me and listened to what I had to say. I’m sure that they wanted to know why I had four kids with me, but the fact that it caused them to listen to my message which was great. I was spreading breast cancer awareness of children!

The second thing that I noticed needs a little background. Being a man going door to door, there are definitely some houses that people just don’t want to open the door to you. When I had children with me, there was not one door that stayed closed if someone was home. In fact, it made people a lot more conversational. They all wanted to know about the four kids that were all within four years of each others age!

The last thing that I noticed was that getting them involved actually did get them involved. Jackson started to ask when I was going to go out next to raise money for breast cancer. All the kids wanted to keep going when I was ready to stop and it really seemed like they wanted to do this good thing. The next time I went out the neighbors saw us on the street and asked if they could come along again. It was really cool to see.

So involve the kids in your fund raising activities, it’s highly likely that they will help out and it’s also really likely that they will pick up something from doing such a fantastic thing for other people. Want some other evidence of how kids helped out with fund raising? Check out Beckie at Ta Ta Sisterhood’s post about her recent fund raising events, one that she had the kids help with! Also, in my fund raising video that I sent out last week, I had the kids read the names of people that had donated as a way to say thank you. It went over really well!

 

$2500 in 5 Weeks!

April 24th, 2010 | Posted by john in Fund Raising - (Comments Off on $2500 in 5 Weeks!)

Here I challenge my friends to help get my fund raising up to $2500 by May 30th. Take a moment to donate at http://60miles3days.com/donate. Thank you for anything you can donate!!!

 

Medic!!!

April 23rd, 2010 | Posted by john in At the Walk - (Comments Off on Medic!!!)

At some point in all of the 3-Day for the Cure there is a chance that you may need to go to the medical tent. In this weeks column, I want to go over things you can do to avoid going to the medical tent and also talk about when you should look to go there.

Let’s Not Go to the Medical Tent!

The medical staff at the 3-Day are great people. Every interaction I have had with them has been good and they have always had a smile despite the hours into the night that they have to work. With that said, if you can do some things to avoid seeing them, aside from at closing ceremonies and in the dining tent, it would be a good thing because that means you don’t need medical attention! There are two definite things that you can do to avoid making their day more busy than it already will be.

First and foremost, stay hydrated. That bears repeating. STAY HYDRATED! That means before, during and after the walk. You should be peeing on the walk more than you have probably ever peed in your life. You should be waking up in the middle of the night to pee, you should be peeing frequently during the day, staying hydrated will do that to you! Definitely make sure that you are hydrate before you go to the shower. The last thing any of the medical team wants to have to do is to pull your naked body out of the showers because you passed out because you didn’t drink enough.

Second, pay attention to your feet. I say this a lot, but walking 60 miles with a blister between your middle toes is not at all fun! I did this my first walk because I didn’t pay attention to my feet. If you pay attention to your feet you can do a lot to treat issues yourself before they become issues that the medics have to take care of. You don’t want a blister so big that they have to lance it, especially if you could have prevented it by stopping for five minutes and putting moleskin over a hot spot.

Let’s Go to the Medical Tent!

There will be occasions where all the preventative measures in the world will not keep you from the medical tent. You need to realize this and accept this now. The 3-Day is not a world’s toughest competition. You’re already doing the tough part: fund raising, training and walking 60 miles. There’s no need to continue walking on an ankle that is killing you. Chances are that they could wrap that ankle up for you and it would feel tons better. If your knees need ice, go get them iced! Prolonging your pain is not going to help you when you get to day 2 or day 3, it’s just going to mean that you are in more pain than you would have been if you had gone and gotten treated. Again, I can’t stress this enough, pay attention to your body. If think you might need medical attention, you probably do.

When you go to the medical tent, you are probably going to have to wait in line. Keep this in mind when you decide to go there, and plan accordingly. Don’t go and expect to get in and out in 5 minutes. These people are good at what they do and will try and get you taken care of as quickly as possible, but there are only so many things you can do in a certain amount of time with two hands. Just make sure that when you plan to go, you are aware that there will be a wait and don’t expect to be done right away. One more reason to do all the preventative care that you can! Avoid the waits!

I had to visit the medical tent the first year that I went on the 3-Day because I didn’t pay attention to my feet and got a terrible blister in a terrible place. Luckily, since then I have done the preventative stuff, done the training (which gets the body ready for the physical nature or the walk!) and not had to go see the medical staff. However, I do still pay attention to my body and if ever there is a time where I’m in a large amount of pain, I will not hesitate to pay them a visit!

 

Interview with 3-Day for the Cure Walkers Micah and Kate Points

April 19th, 2010 | Posted by john in Interviews - (Comments Off on Interview with 3-Day for the Cure Walkers Micah and Kate Points)

I interviewed walkers and husband and wife Micah and Kate Points. We talked about how it is participating in the 3-Day when you are married. Also, this is the first MALE participant that has been interviewed for 60 Miles!

 

Join a Team! Start a Team!

April 15th, 2010 | Posted by john in General - (2 Comments)

Let me start by saying that the 3-Day for the cure is not impossible. It’s difficult, but you can still complete this amazing journey on your own. You don’t HAVE to join a team to finish the 3-Day, but I highly recommend it. If you have read my other articles, you can probably tell that there is a list of a few reasons broken out on why to be on a team so here it is!

Training Support

I’m not terribly great at getting motivated to get out and walk. There’s a good chance that some of you reading this are in the same boat as me. Getting up at 6 in the morning to go walk 12, 16 or 18 miles is just not at the top of my “great things to do on a Saturday” list. Having a team is great for training for a couple of reasons.

First, if your team is local to you, you can plan training walks together that way you are all suffering at 6 AM together. If your team is not local, there is still somewhat a sense of accountability. I know that if Julie, my team mate that lives several hundred miles away walked a good amount of mileage this week I feel like I have kind of let her down. Yeah, it’s kind of like guilting you into walking, but it works.

Fund Raising Support

I’m better about getting motivated to go fund raising, but again I bet that there are some that either can’t get motivated or just don’t know where to start. Having a team to bounce your fund raising ideas off of is extremely helpful. Even if you are great at getting out there and motivated to go ask people for money, there are still those occasions when you have a fund raising idea that you think is great that your team can ground you and say, “that’s great, but how are you going to accomplish this part of the idea?” They can also give you some great (and admittedly not so great) ideas for your own fund raising.

The other place that your team can help is actually doing team fund raisers. There may be an idea that someone in your team has for raising money that just can’t be done with one person or would be a lot easier with more than one. Team fund raising is a great way to augment your personal fund raising and also to bond with your fellow team mates.

Buddy Buddy

Even though everyone is very friendly on the walk and you make lots of friends, it’s still nice to have someone that you have talked to before you go to the walk. Someone that knows how you walk and what causes you to start complaining. Also, it’s nice to know who you were tenting with before you get to the event so you know what you need to bring and what the other person will bring with them.

So join a team or start a team today! Don’t know anyone that’s participating in the 3-Day for the Cure? Well, there’s two ways to rectify that: get your friends to sign up or find someone without a team on the share list and see if they will team up with you!