15 Thoughts from the 3-day

Well, the walk is finally over, so here's some deep (and not so deep thoughts) from the Philadelphia 3-day. (Side note: That fountain was in downtown Philly...can you believe how ridiculously pink it is? and how cool! It looks like a giant pond of Pepto.)

1). Blue, Red, and Purple Gatorade pretty much all taste the same. At all the pit stops, they had either Gatorade or water that you could fill your water bottle with. By the end I was just taking whatever the person closest to me had even if my bottle was already partially full of a different color.

2). Just because something is sponsored by Pepperidge Farms does not necessarily mean that there will be Goldfish available...though it should.

3). The smell of Bengay permeates EVERYTHING. My dad used pretty much an entire tube of Bengay after the first day. It was like living in a senior citizens' aromatherapy room. We were downstairs in the lobby and some lady was like "it smells like Bengay down here." I lost it. We came back to the hotel room 12 hours later and it still smelled.

4). The 3-day people are big LIARS. Every morning we would get a card that would have the mileage for all the stops on it. So you'd get to a pit sto,p be like "oh, there's only 1.3 miles till the next pit stop." Then we'd walk for like 20 minutes and hit the "1 mile till pit stop" sign. That's BULL SHIT! Just because they put "all mileage is approximate" on the card, should not give them the right to dick around with us. Also, someone had an extremely accurate pedometer that measured 25 miles on the day we only were supposed to walk 20.

5). Boobs are funny. There were funny boob related signs, shirts, team names and cheers all over. So here are my favorites: Team Hakuna Ma Ta-tas, the old guys that wore the "boobs make me smile" and "I'm here for the boobies" shirts, the little 4 year old and 6 year old chanting "breasts yes, cancer no," the girl dressed as a pirate with the "treasure your chest" sign, and finally the "save a life, grope your wife" sign.

6). I am a big sap. There was a woman walking that had a sign on her back that said "I walk...because I miss my mom" and it had a picture of her with her mom and the date her mom died in 2005...cried like a baby...little kids with a homemade sign that said "walk, mommy, walk"...cried...no reason at all when I was walking in some random park...cried.

7). Gay guys dancing with pink boas make everyone smile. We had three "support team members" that didn't walk, but just drove us around and cheered us on and brought us changes of shoes and stuff. The one guy every time we saw him cheering, he was dancing with a pink feather boa to Abba songs. It brought a smile to everyone's face.

8) Anyone who says home field advantage does not exist is a LIAR. We had these cheering sections where people would clap and high five and give you candy and cookies and whatever and no matter how tired I was after hitting one of them, I could go on forever even if it was straight up hill. My dad was also wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt, so we got a lot of "Go Irish"'s too.

9) And speaking of hills. HILLS SUCK! Even downhills suck and when the hill is at mile 19.8 of a 20 mile walk. They suck more. If I were to do this again, I'd pick a nice flat city...like Chicago.

10) Sometimes straight guys look good in pink. It was amazing how many guys that participated actually wore pink. And along this same note, there are about 20 billion shades of pink.

11) No matter what is sore if you ignore it, it will eventually go numb. Things hurt that I didn't know existed, but if I ignored it, it would eventually go numb. Along these same lines, just because you look like you are going to die, feel like you are going to die, and think you are going to die, does not necessarily mean you will die.

12) It is possible to gain weight after walking 60 miles...I did it. Gained 5 pounds this weekend. How does this happen? Possibly because I ate pretty much anything I wanted because I was walking 60 miles.

13) It is possible to have a blister bigger than the toe it is on. My friend Becky took off her shoe and her pinkie toe was bigger than her big toe, which was weird until we realized that the entire top portion of it was a blister. She held it up to the sun and you could see through the top 2/3 of her toe. Gross! It is also possible to have a blister with a blister on it.

14). Even when it's not a race, it's a race. They had a counter at each pit stop and finish line, so every chance people would ask what number they were. At the end of the day 1 we were like 1320, which isn't bad out of 3900 people. At the end of day three, my dad and I were 508 and 509. Which was great, except it could've been better had we not waited 45 minutes at lunch for the rest of our team to catch up...GRRR...they also count all the people that were bussed back, so that's not really fair.

15) It is absolutely impossible for my dad and I to have a sentimental moment. Because he's a jerk. So we're walking down the finish line aisle thing. People cheering, his arm around my shoulders, having just walked 60 miles together and you know what he does? Hip checks me so that I fall over sideways. Ass.