Lisa will tell you that she is not a survivor yet. She’s still going through chemo and is on her way to being a survivor but she won’t accept that title yet. This is my interview with Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure walker Lisa Koenigsberg. We talked about her fight with breast cancer as well as what it means to sign up as a walker in the 3-day when you are going through breast cancer treatment.
A lot of first time walkers (I did this too when I was a first time walker) will ask, “I don’t really need to do that much training do I? I’m active and in shape, it shouldn’t be too hard to do this.” In my first year I trained, but not nearly as much as I should have. I just felt like I could keep going on and on forever and it didn’t matter the mile count. True, I did finish, but my feet were in terrible shape and I was incredibly sore for more than a week after the event. After that, I realized that all the training walks that you do going up to the 3-Day for the Cure are not just so you can have done so many miles and be better prepared to just go the difference, in my mind there are actually three reasons (other than walking long distances) to do as much training as you can before the event. Here they are.
Pay Attention to Your Feet
The largest benefit that I think I got out of doing the many training walks was to learn how to pay attention to my feet. When you haven’t done a lot of walking, you don’t necessarily know that the right hand ball of your right foot tends to get hot spots and blisters. Knowing that, you can make sure to tape that section of your foot up before you start walking and have it not become a problem. It also means that when you’re out walking and you start to feel something different on your foot, you know that it’s a problem because you’re aware of what your feet should feel like after walking 6,12, or 18 miles.
Directly hand in hand with this is how to take care of your feet when you know there is a problem. There are lots of things that people will do to help out their feet. I use NexCare tape, but lots of other people use moleskin, Vaseline, body glide, blister band aids and much more. You won’t know what works for you unless you get out there, train, and experience the foot problems that you are likely to get on the walk.
Don’t Be So Callous
Actually, that’s not true. You need to be callous. In fact, being callous is reason number 2 for doing the training walks. As you do these many miles leading up to the walks, your feet are going to build up callouses. A lot of people have already said this in many places, but it bears repeating. Don’t go get a pedicure and scrape off the callouses that you have trained to build up. Callouses will help prevent blisters and you want to have them around for the walk.
Pace Yourself
I didn’t really realize this last reason to do training walks until the third year that I walked. Training with different paces is important. When you do the 3-Day for the Cure, you are going to be walking with thousands of other people. There are times when those people will not walk as fast as you want to go. There will be times when you walk slower. There is no right pace for walking 60 miles, but when you get among those other people and adrenaline takes over you will some times end up walking faster than you are used to. This can end up hurting muscles and also cause unnecessary blisters (as if there is a necessary blister) because you are walking at a pace you haven’t trained at and your body is moving in a way it is unaccustomed to in order to keep up.
To try and avoid some of the problems with this, you need to train at different paces. One day, you might go all out as fast as you can for an extended period, one day you might walk very slow. The key is to get used to training at multiple paces so that when you get excited that you met someone new and want to walk with them, you don’t kill yourself going their pace. If you look at the training walk plan that the 3-Day for the Cure provides you, you will see that they also recommend training at different paces.
So in answer to the question of “do I have to do all these training walks?” No, you don’t, but the more that you do, the better you will feel during and after your 60 miles. And let’s face it, it’s a lot more fun to walk into closing ceremonies than to hobble into closing ceremonies.
Last Friday I did a training walk and interview with San Diego 3-Day walkers Sandy and Debbie. They are both breast cancer survivors and multi-year walkers. We talked about the reasons that they walk and some training tips that they had for first time walkers.
A lot of first time 3-Day walkers will ask, “What should I do for fund raising?” and there is a lot of advice out there. I could probably spend all year describing the different ways one could do fund raising and still not have covered everything. My favorite piece of advice for new walkers is simple. Start early, start small.
Starting early sounds like pretty sound advice that everyone should follow, but a lot of people forget this key part of fund raising. You’re going to have ups and you’re going to have downs as you go through trying to raise all the money that you can in the fight against breast cancer. Some weeks you will have all sorts of donations from all corners, while others you may not have any. With this in mind, why not start the fund raising roller coaster earlier? When you start earlier, you don’t have to worry about raking in a ton of money every week because you have more weeks to gather donations. While it would still be great if you were getting tons of donations per week, it lets up the pressure. Besides, isn’t it a much better feeling to be signing up for the walk and have $700 more than you needed than to be signing up and have $700 less than you need? It just takes off a lot of stress when you have more time to get the funds raised.
Let’s talk about starting small now. I know, you’re probably saying “Wait! I have to raise $2300, I should be starting big and not small!” I understand, everyone that has to do the walk has to raise the same amount and a lot of people choose to make their goal higher. When I say to start small, I don’t mean to aim to only get $5. What I mean is to have a fund raiser that requires minimal effort and gets you some donations really quick. A couple of good examples would be: sending out e-mails to friends, sending out letters to family, posting on Facebook. This year, I decided to go to a couple of neighbors that I knew were home. I spent a very little time telling them about what I was doing and they made donations. It was a great start! I’ll be honest, the whole idea of starting small is simply a way of saying, “start in a way that you will have some success and little effort,” because as humans it’s a lot easier to continue on with something when you have not done a whole lot and had great success than if you had done a massive amount of work and garnered a very small amount of success.
Along the same lines of starting small. I realize that there are fund raisers that you are going to want to do that require a large time investment. I’m not going to deter you from doing them. What I will recommend that you do is to stagger small time investment fund raisers with the large time investment ones, so if the one that requires a lot of time doesn’t work out, you have something to look forward to that does knock it out of the park.
As you participate in future 3-Day walks, you will start to feel out what fund raising opportunities work best for you and you don’t have to worry so much about starting small. You can worry about the things that you have found to be tried and true and go from there. Good luck getting out there and fund raising everyone!
When I did the 3-Day in 2007 with my mom, she did the vast majority of her fund raising by going door to door. I’ve done a little bit of this every year and have always come back with a decent amount, but this year I have decided to put a good amount of time into going door to door and see what happens. I will be the first to admit that going door to door to ask for donations for the 3-Day is not one of the most pleasant experiences that you will have in your fund raising. With a little planning, a little courage, and a small bit of luck it can be very rewarding and help you get a good way to your goal. So I’m going to cover the why’s and how’s of door to door fund raising.
Why on Earth Would I go Door to Door?
I usually look at fund raising as a ratio. Amount Raised per Hour Spent and you can also add Amount Raised per Dollar Spent to that. Basically you want the Amount Raised per Hour to be as high as possible. Minimal work output for maximum funds input (to the 3-Day).There are one or two fund raising methods that have a better Amount Raised per Hour (we’ll call it ARpH from now on) spent than door to door, like e-mail. The problem with most of these is coverage. Yes you may be able to have a great ARpH by sending out e-mails with no cost outlay, but it is reliant upon the size of your e-mail list. If you only have 100 people that you e-mail and half of them contribute $20 on average then you’ve raised $1000. That’s a great amount with little time. Door to door takes more time but greatly expands your list. You can knock on anyone’s door, regardless of whether you have met them or not!
In addition, even though the ARpH is lower than e-mail, it’s much higher than other means. For instance, my sister and I did a garage sale fund raiser two years ago. We had a bunch of stuff donated, we had our own stuff donated, we even made baked treats to sell there. In two days (about 4 hours per day) we raised $500-$600. But that was split between two people, so my ARpH was $37.50 if I take the high end. Compare that to last weekend when I only spent half an hour going door to door (I was short on time) and I raised $80. That’s $160 ARpH! I realize, results may vary, but any of the fund raising ideas have results that may vary.
How to do Door to Door.
Hopefully you have read the above and decided that door to door is a great idea. But before you set off to knock on everyone’s door to raise money, here are a few things that you should probably consider:
Hopefully you read this and think that door to door might just be the right thing to complement your fund raising. It’s probably not the answer to all of your fund raising needs, but I think that it is a great way to augment what you’re probably already doing. If you still don’t think that door to door is right for you, then keep an eye out over the next few weeks as I’ll be trying to bring a few more fund raising ideas up and discussing the merits of each.
