Survival - Of The Not-Fit-At-All

I did it! I walked 3K today!
Yep, today was the day of the 3K walk (also a 5K race too) to benefit the Cure Autism Now organization and I did the walk and lived (barely) to tell about it now too!
Keep in mind here, prior to even registering to participate in this event, I did the comparison thing online to see what exactly did 3K equate to in terminology I understand and it worked out to be 1.86 miles. I figured since a walk around the village here where I live amounts to about 2 miles, that this was comparable, on a bit more level ground too, so I decided I dared to try this.
There were eleven of us on our team. My older daughter, Carrie, her fiance, Robert, her son- my grandson, the Prince, Alex (age 9), my son, Clayton, my younger daughter, Mandy and her younger stepdaughter, Sierra, who is eleven. In addition, there was Lois - a friend and co-worker of Mandy's at the grocery store, Amie -my son's former girlfriend who came up here last night from Littlestown (near Gettysburg) to do the walk with us and a dear friend of mine from my high school days, Sharon, who now lives in State College - and of course, fat old me!
While Sharon and I made this a pretty much leisurely stroll around State College, along the pretty tree-lined streets lined with fraternity houses and gorgeous older homes with the stone fronts and all, the rest of the group with us moved along at a somewhat faster pace. However, when Sharon and I had completed the walk, our time was 55:58 minutes and there were still about 10 walkers behind us - all who were also much younger too than Sharon and I are! So we felt pretty doggone good and pleased as punch with ourselves for having made it around the course.
We had initially planned to take both the little ones with us too but because the weather forecasts for today got yuckier and yuckier as the week progressed, calling for rain, temps to be in the 30's, Mandy decided we'd best not take a chance on lugging them along. HOwever, although it probably only did get up to the high 30's during the walk, there was (thankfully) no precipitation and Mandy then felt quite guilty about having left Miss Maya at home with her Aunt Kathy -her dad's sister. I think Maya probably would have enjoyed the whole thing very much and also, it may have cured her from asking us almost daily "Walk me? Walk me?" regardless of how miserable the weather might be. Then again, maybe it would have started a life-long habit of enjoying the prospects of a nice crisp and brisk walk too.
Who knows? I sure don't but not much can be done now to rectify that.
Right now, I'm not sure exactly how much our team will end up with for our contribution to the fund raiser though. We have $843 tallied up on our team at this time, plus I turned in checks totally $60 at the event today. I don't know if we can get credit to our team for the three new walkers who went with us - Lois, Amie and Sierra - or not as Mandy said they didn't ask if they were on a specific team or anything but if I can contact the coordinator and see about that, it might add another $45 to our donation totals. And, if I understand and have all the paperwork completed properly, we should then qualify to have Thrivent, a Lutheran service agency, match what monies we collected, up to $1,000 which then would give us at least $1,800 in contributions to the organization.
And I think that was a pretty respectable sum we collected even without the potential matching funds, don' t you?
When I got home today though, I must confess that I was then - and still am at this time now too -stiff, very, very stiff. Probably will ache even more all day Sunday now I suppose, too. Oh well, take another Alleve and shut up about it as it was worth every step and every lingering ache tonight in my ankles, knees and my hip/leg joints too!
Sunday now, I have to get moving enough to cook for the birthday celebration Mandy has planned for little Kurtis who was a whole big year old this past Friday - the 13th - but we aren't having his birthday party until today. Gotta cook up a huge batch of Sloppy Joe stuff, along with a casserole of macaroni and cheese (something that is pretty much guaranteed that will be acceptable fare for the princess, Miss Maya here), plus Mandy is making a really good pasta salad that a cousin of ours had fixed for our family reunion last summer. So, there will be no starving folks in this house today at any rate. (Although some of us here could use a bit of "starvation" in order to be able to fit better into some decent clothes she recently purchased to wear to her big 45th Class Reunion coming up on June 2nd! Gee, wonder who that might be?)
And now, I am off to beddy bye in hopes that I will still be able to walk when I wake up come morning!