Day 1 – On The Trail

The first hour of the first day is an incredible sight – a steady stream of humanity, men and women walking two or three abreast (pun intended), a flow extending uninterrupted for more than two miles. It is the only time during the 3-Day where everyone begins walking at the same moment.

We walked through the normally quiet suburban streets of Coon Rapids, in an area that my teammates and I knew well from our training. When we turned into Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park and followed a trail through the woods along the river, it felt like just another Saturday – aside from the fact it was Friday and that we were accompanied by a couple thousand new walking partners.

I met two women, Mary, who was walking in her second 3-day, and her friend Melissa, who Mary had persuaded to walk in her first 3-Day. I met two of my teammates, Georgia and Laurie, who I hadn’t met before (at least I don’t remember meeting them). And I met two guys from Michigan, who were walking for their wives.

We walked most of the morning along a trail that followed the Mississippi River. We walked under a canopy of elms and oaks, and through neighborhoods past houses with well-maintained lawns and gardens. After the second pit stop, where we refilled water bottles and emptied our…well, you know..., we moved out of the neighborhoods and onto a more heavily road. The skies were clearing, the sun was out, the day was well underway. People in passing cars honked and waved. Drivers who were stopped at intersections watched in disbelief as hundreds of people walked by.

We approached the first “cheering station” of the weekend, a designated place where friends and family cheered the walkers. I heard it before I saw it. People lined both sides of the sidewalk for two blocks, cheering and clapping and holding signs with the names of the walkers they knew. They cheered every walker – "Thank you!"...Great job, walkers!" I walked with two women I had met less than half a mile earlier, twins named Traci and Tanya. (I’d never been with twins before…but that’s another story.) They were walking for their stepmother, a breast cancer survivor, who happened to be waiting for them at the cheering station with a sign with their names on it, thanking them for walking. The twins saw their stepmother and rushed to hug her. I took a picture of the three of them together and then left to continue on my way.

Somehow, I had lost my teammates. As funny as it sounds, that happens a lot. Unless you’re walking with just one or two others and always walk with them and go through every pit stop together, it’s easy to be standing near someone in a crowd of people, turn around and not see them. And often, I’ve found that it’s a lot tougher to walk at the same pace with a slower (or faster) walker during the 3-Day, when there are hundreds of other people to walk with, than it is during a training walk, when it’s just two or three or four people walking together.

So I walked on my own for a while. I met a woman named Carol, a utilities supervisor for the city of Apple Valley. She was in her fifties, walking in her first 3-Day. She had never done anything like this before, but she told me she “just wanted to do something.” I told her that she picked a pretty impressive “something.”

I passed by small groups of people along the route, standing on street corners or sitting in lawn chairs, waiting to see walkers they knew. Many held signs; some had bowls of candy or popsicles; a few had noisemakers – anything to keep urging on the walkers. As I walked by one of the small groups, a woman called out to me, “Hey, I remember you, you’ve walked a lot in past years!” I didn’t recognize her, she could have been anybody – maybe someone who had walked in the 3-Day before. But she recognized me. I would see her again during the walk – on Saturday morning and afternoon at the cheering stations and on Sunday afternoon at the finish area. I never got her name. But I know I’ll remember her, just as she remembers me.

We stopped for lunch at a school in Mounds View, within sight of interstate highway 35W. I used the…ahem…facilities (okay, I’ll say it – we call them porta-potties…and after three miles of continuous walking – and drinking – they’re the prettiest things you’ve ever seen), then I filled my water bottles, got my lunch and looked for my teammates. We sat in the shade of a tree on the side of a hill, overlooking the baseball fields in the schoolyard. I saw Maria, one of our teammates working on the crew. Her job in the lunch area was to walk around in a leprechaun costume, greeting walkers (see photo in web album). And then I saw Jim and Terry, two more teammates, also working on the lunch crew. They were emptying trash containers – while wearing kilts (see photo in web album). Yes, my female teammates asked them if they were wearing anything under the kilts. No, they didn’t answer. And no, I didn’t want to know!

After lunch, I walked in the warm sunshine with two of my teammates, Dawn and Maria, through Rice Creek Park and along the streets of Shoreview. We talked and laughed with each other and with the other walkers, all of whom formed a caravan, of sorts. We admired the homes, waved to passing vehicles, endured the long steady incline of the path, and gave hugs and high-fives to the men and women of the safety crew, who made sure we crossed each intersection safely.

Finally, after nearly 20 miles (and a lot of questions about the accuracy of those signs that read “Pit Stop - 1 Mile Ahead”), we came to the end of our first day. Due to the layout of the trail, we were actually bused from the final pit stop in Shoreview to our campsite at Harvest Park in Maplewood. We got off the bus, made sure our walking muscles still worked after sitting for 20 minutes, and entered camp to the cheers of walkers and crew. As many times as I've walked into camp at the end of the day, I never get tired of that wonderful feeling of being welcomed "home".

We did it – we made it through Day 1!