Following up on an earlier post, I’m pleased to report that my lovely Girlfriend Anne did very well last weekend in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes. But looking back, I don’t think I made it clear exactly what this event was. It’s an annual charity event held at Salt Lake’s Liberty Park; two laps around the park’s perimeter added up to 5K. It’s not a race, and it’s not timed (although I did, in fact, time her — more on that in a sec). It’s basically a pleasant morning stroll (along with a couple thousand other folks and their children and dogs) followed by some carnival-type activities in the afternoon, all for the good cause of raising money to research juvenile diabetes. But 5K — roughly three miles — is a pretty good walk for someone who wasn’t especially active up until fairly recently, and Anne was genuinely nervous the night before, wondering if she’d be able to make it all the way around or if she’d become exhausted partway, or get leg cramps, or otherwise end up feeling humiliated by the whole thing. She needn’t have worried. As I said, she did great… in fact, she and her friend Kathy got annoyed at the slow pace of the herd shambling along the designated path and decided to cut over to an adjoining sidewalk so they could go at their own pace. They completed their laps, plus cut back through the middle of the park to reach the official finish line, in just over an hour, well ahead of most of the other walkers. Sadly, I can’t tell you precisely how much over an hour, because I messed up on my timekeeping duties and accidentally reset the stupid stopwatch partway through. Hey, I recently bought a new cellphone and I’m not familiar with the stopwatch function yet! Anyhow, the total I calculated at the end was one hour and five minutes; I’m guessing the actual time was probably more like 1:10 or maybe 1:15. Still, pretty good… and Anne wasn’t winded or sore and in fact seemed ready to go around again! I’m very proud of her.
She did well on the fundraising end of things as well, starting with a modest goal of $150 and ending with $180. I’d like to personally thank our friends and coworkers who donated, and point out that the JDRF will still accept funds in Anne’s name for up to eight weeks, so if you didn’t contribute and you’re thinking you’d like to, it’s not too late! Just go here and click the big orange “Donate to Anne” button at the top of the page. She and I both thank you in advance.
