Relay for Life

On Saturday, July 25th, the Hawk and Naan and I participated in the Relay for Life in Pleasanton, an annual event that benefits the American Cancer Society and helps raise awareness and donations for cancer research. The relay is a fundraising walk, where each team is responsible for having a team member on the relay track at all times during the 24-hour event. Our friend and Pilates instructor K-Dawg has walked in this event for the past few years and extended the offer to Hawk and me to join her team. Because of the Hawk’s recent diagnosis of ovarian cancer, I really wanted to participate. Naan decided to join us, too, so for the past few months we’d been heavily fundraising. Thanks to our many generous friends and family, I raised over $1,000 and the three of us collectively raised over $2,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Because our team had so many team members, our team captain was very flexible about our walk times. She basically told us that we could walk whenever we felt like it and stay however long we wanted. We therefore arranged to walk in the afternoon, since that time worked well for K-Dawg, and we wanted to be able to walk with her. However, even though we weren’t planning to officially start until around 1:00 pm, we decided to participate in the survivors’ lap, which was at 9:45 am. We’d gone to bed really late the night before, since we were still trying to finish our relay shirts, and Hawk briefly entertained the idea of skipping the survivors’ lap, since it meant we’d have to get up early to go to the event, leave to grab lunch, and then go back again in the afternoon. However, we convinced her that we should and in the end we were really glad we had, since the survivors’ lap was really emotional and probably our favorite part of the day. They started it out by having one-year-or-less cancer survivors walk to the front of the group, followed by five-year-or-less survivors, then 10-, 20-, and 30-year survivors. They then had the one-year-or-less survivors turn around and look at the rest of the group, while they told them, “This is your future.” It was a really moving symbol, and each survivor was also given a medal that said “hope” on it and a special “cancer survivor” t-shirt.

At the end of the first lap, the caregivers to the survivors were asked to join them on the track to walk the second lap. Ba joined the Hawk, and Naan and I joined them about halfway through that lap.

After the opening two laps, the five of us left to have brunch. I was especially starving because I’d gotten up that morning and done Group Kick before the relay started. Afterward, all of us, except Ba, headed back to the relay. Although Shweetie wasn’t planning to walk, he did join us for one lap so he could get some pictures. The Hawk, Naan, and I were proudly sporting our “Team Hawk” shirts, which were BEYOND COOL.

We began walking around 1:00 pm with K-Dawg, and continued until 3:45 pm. We lost track of how many laps we did, but according to the Hawk’s pedometer, we walked about 5½ miles. Although that doesn’t sound really impressive, it was about 90 degrees out, so it was pretty strenuous. However, the company was good and there was live music and singing, so we had a lot of fun. The band even did a pretty decent rendition of Duffy’s “Mercy,” which is one of our Group Power songs, so K-Dawg and I pretended to do a biceps routine while walking on the track, which, like our Hawk shirts, was BEYOND COOL. Curry also joined us for the last twenty minutes or so of our walk, so it was nice that all six of us participated, at least in some small way!

We were pretty tired after completing our relay stint, but Hawk and Naan and I were really glad that we decided to participate this year together. It was for a great cause, but, more importantly, it was a nice way to acknowledge something that has had a major impact on our lives in the last year.