3-Day Diary: What the heck were we thinking?

What's another three miles after you've been on the hoof for 20?

Opening ceremonies for the 3-Day Walk are held early Friday at the Kansas Speedway.

Editor’s Note: The Journal-World’s Andrew Hartsock is participateing in the Breast Cancer 3-Day, a walk to raise money for research, on Sept. 15-17. He’ll be keeping a diary of the event and preparations for LJWorld.com. This is his Friday evening post.

Read part one of the diary.

Read part two of the diary.

What in the heck were we thinking?

Back in the spring when we signed up to participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk, we figured we’d train our way into walking shape and make it through the three days with a minimum of suffering.

And when we learned the 3-Day would conflict with our participation in the Light the Night Walk – a walk to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society – we figured we could suck it up and do them both.

After all, Light the Night is a mere three-mile stroll, in the cool of the evening.

What’s another three miles after you’ve been on the hoof for 20?

At least, that’s what my wife and I told ourselves.

Now, as I write this in the few minutes I have between the completion of Day One of the 3-Day and the time we have to head out to Light the Night, there are few things I want to do less than lace ’em up again.

It’s not that the first walk was that bad. It’s just that it was the culmination of things.

The 3-Day started around 6:30 Friday morning at the Kansas Speedway, so that meant a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call. And when you’re used to working until 1:30 a.m., that’s early.

After a lap around the Speedway’s famed trioval, we headed south – into a wind that, according to weather.com, was around 20 mph and gusting to 30 mph – up Kansas Highway 7, along back roads and bike-and-hikes to the 3-Day camp at Shawnee Mission Park.

A bit of a medical condition forced us to ride the sweep wagon the final two or three miles to camp, but we should make that up at Light the Night.

I’d suggest we bail on LtN, but my wife’s sister went a couple of rounds with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, so LtN is a cause that means a lot to our family. After what she went through, we should be able to haul our sorry behinds around Corporate Woods for a couple of miles.