Well I did it!

Today, I did my five mile sponsored walk for the American Heart Association.  It was my first sponsored event since primary school and can I just say, fundraising has come a long way from going door do door with a pen and a piece of paper and getting excited when someone sponsored you a quid!

Last night, before bed, I decided that our ‘team’ name (since it had graduated from just Baz and I doing the walk, to the entire Madden family and Col and I also) was going to be ‘Beat it’, get it? Heart beat, beating heart disease? No? Pffft! Well I think it’s cute!

Today started off pretty early, we got up around 7am (after hitting the snooze a few times) and we were up at the park by 8.15am.  Col dropped me off and went to park the car (traffic was mustard!) when I went in to the park, there were two women at a stand handing out T-shirts and surrounded by mini muffins and fruit.  Not knowing how things were being organised, when one of them asked me my size, I said Large and helped myself to a banana and a mini muffin.

As I dandered through the park and past the various ‘team’ stands set up, one of the gals at the Walgreens asked if I wanted to sign up to walk for Walgreens, and the penny dropped.  Sign up for a team, get a t-shirt, sometimes goody bags and walk in their colours.  I apparently unknowingly signed up for the UT team! Whoops! LOL!

I spotted someone in SLB blues, decked out in a cap, T-shirt with a Schlumberger bag on their back, I walked in their general direction (it was like follow the yellow brick road, only follow the Schlumberger blues!) and I found their table, grabbed a T-Shirt and a bag, breakfast burritos (yes, SLB had the best food selection around!)

Col found me, we chowed down on breakfast, while remarking that the group of SLB participants was the biggest of all of the other companies represented there.  It was a moment of beaming blue pride for me, I’ve never been so…honoured? to be a Schlumberger spouse!

The walk itself was really good fun! It went faster than I thought it would, mostly, of course, because I had company, someone to talk to and keep me distracted from the walking.  Having company also made me walk faster than I would have done, had I been solo.  When they gave out the information about the event, they said that the walk was from 9.30am to 11am, we all kinda went, ‘hmm, that’s not a very long time allocation’, but we ‘ran with it’.

The first three and a half miles, didn’t really bother me at all, in fact, I quite enjoyed the nice walk with Bazil.  The last mile or so, was a struggle, my legs were tiring and my hips were starting to hurt a bit, but we did it!

We crossed the line after around 1hour and 39 minutes and we were all very proud of ourselves…especially little Eve, who, at 12 days old, was the youngest participant in the Heart Walk!

The wonders of modern technology (email, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging) made it particularly easy for me to bug people until they sponsored me!  I started off with the ‘minimum’ goal that the American Heart Association website would let me set, $300.  When I surpassed that goal, I then increased it to $400 and then subsequently $500.

The total amount I’d raised by the time I took to the street this morning was a whopping $615!!

I am truly grateful to all who contributed, every nickel and dime donated, was given to a very worthy cause.  Thank you all, really!  I raised more than I aimed to, more than I’d hoped to and I really am blessed with such generous friends!