I’ll be honest here and say that this post was a little tougher to write than others. If you have read this blog for some time, I’m usually talking about ideas for the walk, or praising my donors in fund raising efforts or putting up videos of people talking about their favorite 3-Day moments. I’m not usually talking about how I was selected for something, but this time I will.

Energizer® has this fantastic program going on called the Keep Going® Blogger. What it boils down to is that they are picking 3-Day for the Cure® bloggers from each of the 15 walks and simply asking them to blog about their experiences. They have gone through the process and selected me as the Dallas/Fort Worth Keep Going Blogger! I’m pretty excited about it, even if it is a little hard to put that excitement into words. Big thanks to Energizer for doing this program!!

If you haven’t been to 60miles3days.com before, I invite you to keep coming back! I’ll be having a weekly post with training, fund raising, packing and event tips as well as weekly video chats with walkers who talk about their favorite 3-Day moments, why they walk and much more! I realize that this post probably won’t give you a real taste for what goes on here, so if you’re looking for something that will give you a better idea, just check out It’s Potty Time one of the more popular posts on here. I’m really looking forward to getting to talk with other walkers with this program and I’m always looking for more walkers to tell me about their favorite 3-Day experiences, if you have one that you would like to share (you don’t have to be anywhere near Dallas to share it!) then just click contact above and let me know! If you’re walking in the 3-Day for the Cure in Dallas, drop by the Energizer tent there and visit me. I’d love to meet you!

Thanks everyone for coming to visit and I hope to see you again real soon!

I’ll wrap this up with a few links that you should maybe check out:

Energizer on Facebook and Twitter

Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure

60 Miles (me) on Twitter

 

It seems like a simple concept, if you’re on a team you should probably meet with the team to discuss team business, but until last year I had never really had a formal team meeting. I always saw them as something that a big team would do and I had never been on a team with more than three people. I figured that we could all keep in touch individually and through the occasional team e-mail and that would be fine. We did OK like that, but a lot of stuff came to light when we all talked with each other and were able to heard and respond to concerns, questions and ideas.

Team meetings don’t have to be an in-person affair. I realize that people are busy and a lot of times teams are spread across the country, so sometimes a phone call is as good as you can get. But if you can get all of your team on a conference call, it’s way better than having no team meeting at all. So here are some great reasons that your team should really be meeting at least once every other month, if not once a month.

Accountability

Probably the biggest reason out there is accountability. This goes for training and fund raising. I don’t want to let my team down, so if I am having a call where everyone is telling about their plans for what they are going to do for fund raising or a training walk that they just got back from I know that I need to get on the ball and catch up with everyone. It’s not that it’s a competition, but seeing how your teammates are doing in these two critical areas will help you gauge how far along you should be by this point. If you have only raised $100 and the other four people on your team are already halfway to their goal, either you’re not putting enough effort into fund raising or you should start adapting some of the techniques that your team is using to help you catch up.

Planning

If you have a team that is planning on doing team fund raisers, a team meeting is a great place to hash out details of how it is going to go down. I realize that a lot of this can be done through e-mail, but I will admit that sometimes I get lost in the sea of e-mail if everyone in the team just keeps replying back and forth. Being able to have a conversation about getting your fund raiser together will make it easier for everyone to follow and make their voice heard about what needs to be done.

First Timers

If you have some first time walkers with veteran teammates, this allows them a chance to ask those questions about the walk that everyone has. Stuff like, “How much should I be walking?”, “What do you do at camp?”, “What should I pack?” and much more. If your team is comprised of first time walkers only, this might be a good time to get to know some of the walkers on the share list and see if there is a veteran walker in your area that might be able to come to your team meeting for a little bit to field questions and help you build the comfort level.

Meet the Team!

Chances are that unless all of your team is from one specific pool of people that you know (like family or work) then not everyone on the team will know each other. Use a section of your team meeting to have time to get to know everyone. The last team meeting that I went to, we had a question of, “what was the most embarrassing wardrobe malfunction you have had?” It seems like a simple enough question, but it got people to talk about something that was a little embarrassing and I think it helped everyone to know each other a little better. When everyone knows everyone better it makes it easier when the time comes to select your tent mate. It’s possible that there are people in the team that don’t know a lot of their team members and don’t already have a designated tent mate. Having a little get to know you time will allow them to know first of who doesn’t have a tent mate and second of if they can get along (though let’s face it, it’s the 3-Day, most people get along).

To the Event!

The last thing I will talk about for having a team meeting for is to actually do planning for the event. If you are walking in an out of town event, this could mean planning the travel arrangements and hotels for before and after the walk. If you are walking in the town that you live in, it could mean arranging for transportation from someone’s house to the event. At the last Texans for Tah-Tah’s meeting, we even talked about what shirts we would wear on what days so that we would be all co-ordinated and easier to pick out in a crowd.

The team meeting is a great thing to do with every team. If it’s just two people on your team, it may not be necessary to have the meetings frequently, but you should still plan on having a meeting or two just to hash out some stuff and keep each other motivated. As the team gets larger, I think the need for meetings gets more and more.

 

I have had a couple of messages lately asking me who the heck are The Speed Gamers and how on Earth did they donate over $10,000 to my fund raising. I’ve mentioned them here and there in several posts, I have verbally told many about them, but I never did a full fledged write up on how awesome they are. I think it’s time that I fix that!

It was early 2009 when a co-worker and good friend of mine name Bob approached me. He knew that I was starting to raise money for the 3-Day and had a suggestion for me. His nephew was a part of a group of guys that ran a web site and raised money for charities. I asked him how, and while I don’t really remember the exact words I’ll explain in my own words what they do:

They have a web site at http://thespeedgamers.com and on this web site they do video game marathons. That last term probably needs a little clarification. They will play a series of games (like Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Mother: Earthbound) for a solid 72 hours (usually, some have been 48 and they have a week long one they do over the summer). That’s 72 hours without stopping. They rotate players in and out so that they can get some rest. On their web site, they have a video feed of the game that they are playing that people can come and watch. In addition to that video feed, they have a feed of a commentator who is talking to the people in the next component of the site and that is the chat room.

So people come, chat, listen to the commentator, watch the video game being played and then donate. The guys don’t take ANY money out of the donations, they donate every single penny to the charity that they are playing for. All funds for paying for their site hosting and everything are generated by selling t-shirts between the marathons (you can buy shirts at http://store.thespeedgamers.com/ if you want to help them out!).

I’ll be totally honest here when I say that when Bob told me about these guys, I was a little skeptical. I couldn’t see how that could raise the type of money that he was telling me about. At the time he thought that they could maybe help me raise $2,000-$3,000. Despite my uncertainty I went ahead and talked with Britt to see if they would do a marathon for me. I figured that even if they raise $100, it would be $100 more than I would have raised without them.

I met with Britt, Bob’s nephew, a couple of weeks after they had done a marathon for Ally’s House and raised over $5,000. This was the most that they had ever raised in a marathon. I was starting to come around, because this was a marathon that they had done working with Bob, so there weren’t any smoke and mirrors to be had. This was in fact the real deal. So I met with Britt. I have to say that I really wish that I had a tenth of the humility and grounding that he has when I was his age. He was soft spoken, he wasn’t bragging at all about the money that he had raised in the past. When I asked him how much he thought the marathon could possibly raise, he answered in a softly spoken voice that he thought it might be able to raise $3,000. That year, the marathon raised $3,000 before the first day was over and $10,586 by the end of three days.

We had another marathon this year and it was only 48 hours long because of some scheduling difficulties, but they still raised over $10,000. I still don’t know that I completely understand it, but these guys are amazing and you should really go check out their site and see if there are other marathons coming up and take a look. I have watched several and it can become kind of addictive.

They do more than just breast cancer fund raising, they help out autism, childhood cancer, and much more. Check out the marathons they have done and the amazing amounts of money that they have raised here: http://www.thespeedgamers.com/past-marathons

The last thing that I want to say is thank you to The Speed Gamers. They took something that they enjoy doing, that a lot of people enjoy doing, and molded that into an immense force of good. You guys rock.

Hopefully I will have an interview with Britt from The Speed Gamers up here in the very near future and we can talk about how they got started, where they are going and anything in between!