My wife makes these awesome signs to hold at cheering stations. This year, she had a sign that said, “My Husband: Sexiest Man You’ll Ever See Wearing a Pink Bra!”. In 2008, she made a sign with a picture of my head at the top and then a drawn body wearing a real bra. I guess you could say it was foreshadowing of this year and actual me wearing a bra at the 3-Day. Also in 2008, she made a sign for my son to carry that said, “My daddy is a warrior against breast cancer!” It didn’t really hit me until later what that meant. At the time, I didn’t feel like a warrior. Maybe it was because of how tired I was from all the walking, maybe I had just never thought about it in that way, but over the weeks and months that followed that 3-Day I realized that I am a warrior against breast cancer, and chances are that if you are reading this then you are too.

What Makes a Warrior?

Whoa, wait a minute, that last sentence might have startled you a little bit like it did me. You may be wondering how you could possibly make you a warrior against breast cancer and I think it’s probably more subtle than you think. While I think that it would be pretty easy to say that people who do these walks and raise all sorts of money for the fight against breast cancer are warriors, I also think it’s more than that. You can be a warrior against breast cancer without ever lacing up the shoes.

I personally believe that each and every person that made a donation to my 3-Day for the Cure efforts is a warrior against breast cancer. They could have very easily said that they didn’t have the money that month or they could have just done nothing and not made donation. But these awesome people decided that it was more important to make a contribution to the fight against breast cancer than it was to get their latte or buy that video game or any other number of things that they could have spent their money on other than a charity.

The next group of warriors against breast cancer make contributions that are more than money can buy. These are the people that support all the walkers and crew in their endeavors. They cheer us on at cheering stations, they push us out of bed for training walks (ok, while that might not seem so supportive at 5 in the morning, it got me out on the training walks which was a big help), they put up with us being away from family for so long because of training. They do all of these things to help keep us on course and keep us motivated for our training and our fund raising. Without them, this event would be a whole lot harder. Without them, we would not make such strides in our fight against breast cancer.

I guess that what I’m saying with all of this is that everyone that goes out of their comfort zone or out of their daily routine to make a difference in the fight against breast cancer is a warrior. Some may think that this is a little hokey, but this has been on my mind for a good while now and it’s something that I felt needed to be said.

Battle Call

Now is the time where I call you to action. If you haven’t ever been involved in the 3-Day for the Cure this is your chance. As I said above, there are many ways in which you can participate and bring out the warrior that I know you can be. Maybe walking is the right choice for you, did you know that the 2011 3-Day for the Cure registration is now open? You could start a team of friends or you could join a team. If you’re really dedicated you could join on your own! Maybe you don’t want to do all that walking, I admit 60 miles is a bit daunting. You can still be involved in the event by being a crew member. Registration for the 2011 3-Day is open for that too! (to register, go to http://the3day.org) Ok, maybe you don’t want to participate in an event. Make a donation to someone that you know that is walking in the walk. We all have to raise $2300 to do this and the more money that we raise the closer that we get to a cure! Don’t have the funds? Look into supporting a walker or crew member in another way. Send them a letter at the 3-Day camp (if you go to spectator info on the 3-Day page and select the city it has instructions to do this) or come cheer them on at a cheering station!

Whatever you do, know that you are doing it for an amazingly good cause. Thanks for reading and thanks for all that you do to be a warrior against breast cancer.

 

This week’s poll is about what your favorite 3-Day for the Cure team name is. But you can’t nominate your own name!

 

We’re not doing a poll today, but since last week was more of a quiz to see who could guess how many bras I would be packing, I thought I would go ahead and put the results here.

34% of people that voted said that I would be packing 3 bras for the 3-Day for the Cure and sadly, they would be wrong. The next highest vote was for 6 bras with 22% of the vote. Congratulations people that voted 6, you were correct! Rub it in your friends faces that you were able to guess how many bras this guy was going to pack on the 3-Day. Or maybe not. For those of you wondering, here’s how it breaks down:

3 bras for wearing that I promised donors that I would do in my video fund raiser.
3 bras will be on my backpack. One is the Survivor bra, which helped me in fund raising, One is a thank you for The Speed Gamers for raising over $10,000 to help out with fund raising and one is in memory of Misha Thomas, who lost her fight against breast cancer this year. Here’s what the bras on my pack will look like. You’ll just have to wait to see what the bras that I am wearing will look like.

<%image(20100709-bras.jpg|400|300|The Bras)%>

Thanks everyone for voting and trying to guess how many bras I will be packing. I’ll see you at the 3-Day!

 

This week is the official “Men of the 3-Day” week here at 60miles3days.com. Stay tuned throughout the week as I will have favorite moments of the men that walk in the 3-Day and polls about the men of the 3-Day. I wanted to start the week off big and I think that this post qualifies as a big effort, so take a look and see if you can help out!

It’s not often that I write a post that is based almost entirely on a post from another blog, but this week that’s exactly what I’m doing. If you haven’t already done it, take a look at this post from Whining Causes Blisters. Read to the end because I thought it was a pretty good post.

Now, I have had some time to mull this over and I really liked the spirit of the post. I especially like the letter written to People Magazine about nominating the men of the 3-Day for sexiest man alive. It got me thinking about what criteria a magazine could have for nominating people for sexiest man alive. So I did some research and found that since 1985, when they started doing sexiest man alive, People has only chosen one non-actor for this category and he was a Kennedy. So going by this track record, if you want to be the sexiest man alive you need to be an actor or in a pinch you need to be wealthy and still have some sort of celebrity status.

Now, you can probably see where I am going with this and you might be thinking to yourself, “Gee, John, you’re a man of the 3-Day, this post is really starting to look self serving”. I gave a lot of thought to this before I put a single word down and I really don’t think that it is. If I were to suggest that I, myself, and no one else should be selected as sexiest man alive then yes I would wholly agree with you. What I am suggesting is that all the men of the 3-Day should be selected as sexiest man alive as sort of a “group” sexiest man alive. Not only will it give recognition to this group of 3-Day participants, it will help raise awareness to the event and also let other men out there know that you don’t have to be a woman to care deeply about eliminating breast cancer.

Think about it, shouldn’t sexy be a function of what someone does in their daily life instead of what genetics and talent agent they have? I realize that some of the celebrities on the list have done some great things over the years for people and that’s great, but a large group of men raising money an awareness for a cause that largely effects women is fantastic. Breast cancer does effect men, but I am pretty sure that most of us are walking for the women in our lives. Personally, I think that someone choosing to take a hard path is a lot more sexy than someone existing how they are normally.

So here’s what I would like to do. If you could take a few moments and write some letters to People and I have also included Time for the Man of the Year award. If you only want to write to one of these, please choose People. If we could get hundreds or even thousands of people to write in and make the suggestion that the Men of the 3-Day should be the man of the year then maybe, just maybe we can change the trend of celebrities with good genes, if only for one year. Deadline time. I always find that it’s easier to get something done by setting a deadline, so if everyone could set a deadline of July 16th (that’s next Friday) to have your letter turned in, that would be great. If for some reason you miss the date, please still send it in! The more letters the better, but I think it would be great if we had hundreds of letters in a really small time for people to take notice!

So here’s the contact information that I have found so far:

People Magazine
editor@people.com

Time Magazine
Time Magazine Letters
Time & Life Buliding
New York, NY 10020

or

letters@time.com

Thank you for any time that you can commit to getting the men of the 3-Day nominated for the sexiest man and the man of the year. Stay tuned over the next few weeks and I will probably do this same sort of thing for the sexiest woman of the year. Thanks to everyone that can write in. Every letter helps get to the goal!!!

 

This week, it’s much less a poll and more of a quiz to see if you can figure out how many bras I will be packing for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure ® Let’s see how many get it right! I’ll post the actual answer next Friday!