Saturday morning I got up at sunrise and took Maegan to Carowinds Amusement Park. Her class was walking for charity to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. This was the 18th annual walk, which started and ended at Carowinds. 6,500 walkers participated, and I was one of them too.

Most other parents dropped their kids off but I had a few different reasons for walking. First off, I've never done a "long distance" walk before and I wanted to test out my ability to accomplish the 4+ miles because I plan on hiking farther than that sometime in the next few months. I also wanted to see how Maegan held up because she plans on coming with me on my hike. Skipping to the end of that story, Maegan was way ahead of me, skipping and running the entire 4+ miles, and even pulling other kids on a wagon.

Another reason I decided to walk, even though I wasn't registered and didn't raise any money myself, was because I didn't feel there were enough parents around to watch all those kids. Sorry to say so but I was right. I found one kid in the group walking alone (buddy system apparently not working), and another group of 4 boys that fell at least a quarter mile behind the group. Since I knew Maegan was in front of me and with friends, I stayed back to make sure everybody made it okay. And don't laugh at that part either. We lost a little girl from our group in the first half mile - literally picked up by ambulance after she fainted.


I found this photo of the event in a slideshow of the News14 website and actually found myself. That's me with the black hat and white shirt.

My personal assessment was that I was tired after 4+ miles but I could have done another couple of miles. My feet were sore but no blisters. I have no idea how people like Ryan Carpenter can walk 1,800 miles, averaging 20 miles every day for 3 months.

Labels: Maegan