Dear New Shoes,
Please help my feet survive training and walking. Preferably without blisters.
Love, Abby
When you really think about shoes, it's kind of amazing. Actually, it's fascinating. My Chacos have survived high school and helped me paint the exterior of a house, they have floated down the Broad in Athens (not purposefully, I might add....Katie Ap and I fell out of a canoe and I almost lost them), they have taken me to and from classes at UGA, they traveled to New Zealand, Fiji, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and France and they are still here. If only shoes could talk, they would have a lot of stories to tell.
2 weeks ago Nancy and I decided to take an adventure to Phidippides aka a "real" athletic shoe store. The one piece of advice I continue to receive for this 3-Day walk is to invest in some good, solid, properly fit sneakers. Nancy and I ventured through Sandy Springs and landed at this great store (they also give part of the proceeds to the 3-Day Walk....shameless plug!) where we received great service. As many of you know...I have giant feet. Well, I didn't know that when you are properly fit for a walking shoe, you are supposed to have a thumbnails length extra from your toe to the end of the shoe. Guess what size shoe that made me? No, not a women's 11.5 (which is still huge)...but a MENS 10. AHH! I am the next Big Foot. This really isn't a big deal except for this minor detail: style. Nancy got to try on pink shoes, shoes with a purple stripe, teal shoes, etc., etc. My options were blue, grey, and neon. I ended up going with neon. They really don't look bad and they were on sale, so it's a win win situation. But I did realize that I will be very, very limited in my athletic shoe selections in the near future.
Here they are:
I am starting to break the shoes in through some minor training. I am trying to make myself train so that 1) I won't die of exhaustion on the 60 mile walk and 2) as a general way for me to stay in shape. So far, my shoes are treating me well and I know they will be one of a couple good pairs of shoes for the walk.Queen Jean's Supreme Team Update:
(new design by Nancy Jean Howe)
Our team continues to grow!!!! We are so excited to have so many wonderful team members and can't wait to hang out with all of them for 3 days straight in October.
As of 5/17/11, our team has raised......
$8,601
Simply amazing! And this isn't yet calculating all of the donations that have been mailed in through the mail. This is just the online total. Once I am finished with school (3 days, but who's counting...) and find myself with some spare time, those snail mail tallies will be added to our total making it grow to (around...) a whopping $14,000+!!!!!!!!!!.
Here is the online link to donate to our team in case you haven't gotten it yet:
We cannot even begin to thank all of you enough for your generous donations and thoughtful notes. We hope you continue to follow us along on this adventure.
All Hail the Queen,
Queen Jean's Supreme Team
