3-Day April Meet-up Round-up

April was a busy month for our Susan G. Komen 3-Day® coaches, who were pounding the pavement at meet-ups and training events, meeting and inspiring walkers for the Komen 3-Day events coming up in just a few months. Let’s see some of the fun and inspiring local events that our 3-Day® family held in April!

Michigan

On Saturday, April 11, walkers and crew members gathered at the New Balance store in Farmington Hills for the Michigan 3-Day 16-week Training Kick-Off Event. A beautiful (if slightly chilly) morning saw nearly 40 walkers head out on a 4-mile training walk, while crew members patrolled the route on their bikes and motorcycles. We even had a cheer station and a sweep van! After the walk, participants enjoyed some snacks and shopping.

Twin Cities

Twin Cities 3-Day coach Stephanie hosted a walker and crew Meet-Up on April 1 at Lucky 13 Restaurant in Bloomington. Five new walkers attended and got lots of great tips from our veteran walkers and crew.

Springtime temps brought these 21 walkers out on April 11 for a Walk & Talk with Coach Stephanie. They enjoyed a 6.5-mile walk around Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis (part of our Day 1 Route).

And in keeping with the training spirit, Twin Cities walkers enjoyed a Get Trained Workshop on April 18, hosted by Run n’ Fun, one of the Twin Cities’ local outfitters. Proper shoes are the most important pieces of equipment walkers will need on the 3-Day, so workshop attendees learned about proper shoe fit based on their own body mechanics, and learned that not only is comfort the key but also how the right shoe helps to prevent injuries.

Seattle

At an April 2 Get Started Meeting at Redmond Library, long-time Seattle (and other cities!) walker William Kline attended in full walking gear—his signature look. He was joined by a few brand new walkers and Tath, a very active training walk leader in the Lynnwood area.

On April 18 at Seward Park, Seattle 3-Dayers met up for a Walk & Talk with Coach Aubrey. They looped around the peninsula, which offered 2.5 miles of Lake Washington and Mt. Rainier views. The walker on the far right (Tina Marie B.) came all the way from Oregon to walk with the group!

Another Walk & Talk, held on April 30 in Renton, included a 2-mile out-and-back along Lake Washington. The group included two members of the Breastketeers and three first-time walkers.

Philadelphia

Over 30 Philadelphia 3-Dayers met up on April 18 at the Philly 3-Day 24-week Training Kick-Off. Hosted by the New Balance store in Cherry Hill, NJ, the event included a training walk and some great how-to demonstrations for packing gear and pitching a perfect pink tent. A great day!

Atlanta

The Atlanta 3-Day folks had their first Walk & Talk of the season on April 4, with wonderful training walk leader Coleen and 5 new walkers. It was a beautiful day, and it was great for these enthusiastic walkers to get some walking shoes on and meet some new friends!

On April 11, Coach Susan hosted a great Get Started Meeting with 3 new walkers and one who was thinking about registering. Susan shared, “We had terrific conversations about training as they were most concerned about how in the world they were going to walk 60 miles! After the formal meeting, we spent even more time answering questions and getting to know one another. It was great to see everyone come together and make connections with each other.”

Dallas/Fort Worth

At a Dallas/Fort Worth 3-Day meet-up on April 2, Coach Gayla was joined 80-year-old veteran walker and extreme fundraiser, Ralph M. He helped welcome and inspire other walkers at Luke’s Locker in Highland Village.

Gayla was back at another Luke’s Locker location on Saturday, April 4 for a Walk & Talk, accompanied by training walk leader and team captain of Angels for the Cure, Debby R. as she led a 3-mile training walk.

April 11 was a busy Saturday for Dallas/Fort Worth 3-Dayers, starting with a 3-mile Walk & Talk with training walk leader Sheryl C. and many members of team STEPS in Plano. Later in the day, the Get Started Meeting at Methodist Hospital in Richardson drew a crowd of brand new walkers who were encouraged by amazing team captains and veteran walkers.

The Greater Fort Worth Susan G. Komen® affiliate held its Race for the Cure on April 25, and the Komen 3-Day community was well-represented (there were many more walkers not in the photo). Even folks who weren’t walking or running in the race were still showing their 3-Day spirit as volunteers (Pink Hair Guy is a popular photo op every year).

San Diego

April was actually a quiet month in San Diego, in terms of local events, but things will ramp up in May. (Next month’s Round-up will include some great shots of the San Diego 3-Day reunion held on Saturday, May 2…stay tuned!).

If you couldn’t make it to a meet-up in April, don’t worry! There are still local events for every 3-Day city in May, and more and more training walks are being added every day. Visit the 3-Day website to find a local event near you.

What’s in Your Pack?

When you’re out walking long distances—for example, all that training you’re doing to walk 20 miles a day on the Susan G. Komen 3-Day®–you want to make sure you’re equipped with whatever you might need along the way. Most Komen 3-Day walkers arm themselves for those long stretches by carrying a waist pack to hold the items they want to keep close by. What you carry in your pack is completely up to you, and chances are the contents will change depending on how far your 3-Day® training walk is taking you.

But to give you some idea of what you might want to include in your waist pack, we asked a few of our 3-Day coaches, who are also walkers, to share what goes in their packs.

Ann, the local events coach for Michigan, takes the minimalist approach to her walking goodies: “I carry a water bottle, my phone, and a couple bucks for fun treats that might show up along the route.”

Jennifer, the participant support coach for Michigan, adds a little bit more to her list of must-haves: “I carry my phone, tissues, Chapstick and sunscreen. I also have mints, because Gatorade mouth is nasty. I’ll carry sunglasses (if they aren’t already on my face), Handi-Wipes, which I use to clean my hands and to wipe my feet at lunch when I change my socks, and of course, extra socks.”

The other 3-Day coaches I asked had more robust lists. Alyssa, my 3-Day social media cohort (who walked her first 3-Day in San Diego last year) shared her list:

Tissues – for a runny nose and runny eyes, which may afflict you at any point
iPhone – fully charged and in airplane mode, of course.
Pink bracelet – because everybody likes to wear pink.
Sunscreen – because reapplication is so important!
Small packet of trail mix – for a heart healthy boost if I’m hungry but have eaten too many grahamwiches
Headband – to keep fly-aways out of my eyes when wind acts up
Fresh pair of socks – because this is the best idea ever. Change into them at lunch and rejoice.
Chapstick – to keep those plump puckers hydrated
Gum – Chewing gum while going up a hill just makes it better.
Large capacity, wide mouth water bottle – so crew can easily fill it with ice and sports drink
3-Day Flair – a badge of pride, and to remember why I’m walking.

Gayla, our Dallas/Fort Worth local events coach, leads or joins training walks throughout the year and has her fanny pack (which she bought in 2005 and has trained with for 10 years) contents down to a science:

2 – 20 oz. water bottles with wide openings for ice
Soothing Care Chafing Relief Powder-Gel by Monistat (I don’t walk anywhere without this gel. I prefer this over the “stick-style” anti-chafing products.)
Spark energy drink mix
Pen (for autographs, ha!)
Phone charger & plug
Tissues
Cash
Mirror
Lip balm
Fundraising business cards
Clean, dry socks in a Ziploc bag to swap sweaty socks mid-day
Driver’s license
Mints or gum
A little extra room in my pack for all the stuff I seem to collect on the route at the cheer stations.

Seattle participant support coach Paula, who, with 15 events under her belt has walked more times than any other coach, totes quite the impressive array of goodies in her pack:

A copy of my credential with my cell number, so my pack will find its way back to me if I lose it!
My driver’s license/ID and my debit card and/or cash for those must-have 3-Day souvenirs or a Starbucks along the route! (This is in the most secure spot in my pack.)
Phone/camera
Wet wipes
Hand sanitizer (clips on to my pack)
Tissues
Pain relief meds (Tylenol/Advil/Aleve)
Chapstick with SPF
Sunscreen
Hairbrush, ponytail rubber band
My 3-Day bub
Rain poncho
Large trash back to sit on if the ground is wet at lunch
Extra pair of socks in a Ziploc bag (bag will hold dirty socks after lunch)
Body Glide
Blister kit – bandages, moleskin, small scissors
Sticky notes and a permanent marker pen (to jot down names/emails of new friends)
A soft “squeeze” ball (mine is actually pink ribbon shaped) which is great to help circulation in your hands and keeps your fingers from swelling from all that arm swinging! J
Any stickers or items I may want to pass out to people along the route. I have some cool pink ribbon temporary tattoos that are a big hit with kids and adults alike!
For training, it’s all of the above, plus sports drink powder for hydration and snack bars for some carbs.

What goes in your pack?

Foolproof Tips for Fundraising Follow-ups

Sending out a fundraising email is one of the most commonly utilized fundraising tactics by Susan G. Komen 3-Day® participants, and for good reason: fundraising emails allow you to reach a potentially large audience quickly and easily, let you tell your potential donors about the Komen 3-Day and why you are taking part in it, and make it simple for donors to click through directly to your personal donation page. That’s why one of the first things the 3-Day® coaches will ask when a walker contacts them to lament the trouble they’re having with fundraising is, “Have you sent out a fundraising email yet?”

Well, have you? You have! Great job!

So now what?

The “now what” tends to be the same for most 3-Day participants: after sending out the first fundraising email, a flurry of donations will come in right away. You’ll feel great, inspired. For a lucky few of you, you’ll end up reaching your fundraising goal just from donations generated from that first email. But for most of you, you’ll notice that after a week or two, the rush of donations slows to a trickle, and you start wondering, “Is that it?”

I promise you, that’s not it. And that’s where the follow-up emails come in.

Here are my time-tested top nuggets of wisdom about working the follow-ups.

Always BCC – Just a quick word about sending out mass emails: always use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) function in your email program (or better yet, send your messages through the email function in your 3-Day Participant Center; you can BCC from there, too). This allows you to send a message to a large group of recipients without openly listing everyone’s email addresses in the To field. It’s important to be respectful of your potential donors’ privacy. That said, some email programs won’t let you see who was included in the BCC field once a message has been sent, so we recommend that you keep a separate list somewhere of everyone you sent your messages to.

A Gentle Nudge – When I was a coach for the 3-Day, I told people all the time that their initial fundraising email gets the word out about their 3-Day journey, but the real fundraising impact comes from the follow-ups. Yes, some people will be inspired to donate right away, but most of your donors probably file your message away under “I’ll get to this later” (especially if you’re sending your letters out months before your event). Sending a follow-up message to your original send list is a way to gently remind those folks who didn’t respond yet that, “Hey, I’m still here, and I’m still counting on your help.”

Time It Right – I think that, in general, 2-3 weeks is a good amount of time to let pass after sending your first fundraising email before you send out a follow-up. After that amount of time, it’s likely that your original message has been inadvertently forgotten or lost in someone’s inbox. So you give folks that gentle nudge, then subsequent follow-ups can be spaced out with the same amount of time, or up to a month apart.

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Category Archives: General

3-Day April Meet-up Round-up

What’s in Your Pack?

Foolproof Tips for Fundraising Follow-ups