The 3 Day: Week Five Progress Report

I received a few fun packages this week. One was from the 3 Day Shop and contained a T shirt, some pinback buttons, a bandanna, & Body Glide! Yeah, those first three items are for promotion (and because I wanted them!), but I've been told that Body Glide is a gift of the Gods when it comes to blister prevention (that purchase was a no brainer!). I also received some stuff for fund raising: silicone bracelets, pink ribbons, & a fundraiser kit from Pink Wings.


Training Update
This week I tried out my second new pair of shoes from New Balance. The size definitely felt better and my heel didn't hurt at all in them. The problem this time was with the balls of my feet and arches doing both an easy walk and a more moderate walk. The moderate walk was a little bit more like power walking and I had to cut it short because of how badly my arches & balls hurt; in fact they were still hurting two days later. The easy walk was better on my arches, but the balls still hurt. I do think that these shoes may not be quite right and that I need more shock absorption in those places, but I also think that it's been a long time since I walked this much and my feet need to get used to it again. I'm going to go visit my friend Ken at New Balance again and see what he thinks. I feel bad that I keep going back, but 60 miles and countless training miles are too far to walk in shoes that don't fit properly.


Fundraising
I had a couple of big fundraising projects to work on this week. The first was the announcement of Blue Buddha Boutique's sponsorship of my forthcoming Pink Warrior Chain Maille Collection. Thanks to Rebeca's very generous jump ring donation, all proceeds from the sale of items from this collection will be able to go straight to my fund raising. I spent a good amount of time creating some pieces this weekend and hope to be able to debut the beginnings of the collection at some point this week. I am very excited about this!

The second fundraiser that I'm working on right now is my raffle. I started a thread in the Etsy forums and have already received commitments for some really fabulous items from a number of very generous people! Check out the thread if you'd like to contribute, otherwise keep an eye on my blog: the raffle will go live in just a couple of weeks.

Every time I get an e-mail with the subject line "A donation was made on your behalf" it feels like I've hit the lottery.
-An Herb Society friend's donation made me feel so much better after getting home from a walk frustrated & in pain.
-Random love from amazing twitter followers was a very happy surprise, too.

Also this week, I sent out my follow up e-mails to the friends, family, and co-workers that I haven't heard from yet. One of those messages resulted in a nice donation! I also sent snail mail to family that I don't have e-mail addresses for.

In last week's update, I mentioned that I wanted to be at about 75% of my goal by the time my training officially starts. Here's a breakdown of what I have in mind:
-Blog Raffle - I will be promoting the hell out of this, but I'm also hoping that my participants may be able to bring some some entries as well. Even if there's only the same number of bids for each of the twenty (so far!) items at a minimum of $5 that will come to $100 worth of donations!
-Pink Warrior Chain Maille Collection - I'm hoping to debut the beginnings of this collection this week. With any luck, I will sell around $200 worth within the first couple of months.
These two fundraisers will bring me up to half of my goal!
-The next big fundraiser for me will be setting up a table outside some stores and at some farmers markets. I've read about other walkers raising any where between $400-$800 by doing this! I have the fundraising goodies that I ordered, a pink ribbon cookie cutter for sugar cookies, and tickets to two separate shows in the area that I can raffle off. So, I have a few different ways of setting up which will allow me to do this multiple times. To get started, I'm going to try to get confirmations for two separate stores or markets and estimate on the low side that together they will bring in the $575 that will bring me to 75% of my goal of raising $2,300.

Mileage to date on training walks: 41
Goal: $2,300
Achieved: $870 or 38%
Remaining: $1,430
Countdown: 215 days until the event!

If you're enjoying keeping track of my progress, please consider supporting me in my effort to eradicate breast cancer. No amount is too little or too much. Thank you!!