South Bay Hunger Crop Walk – 3 Miles

On Sunday, I was delighted to join eleven members of my church, Almaden Hills United Methodist Church, in walking the South Bay Hunger Crop Walk to help raise money to help feed members of our community and nation. We started our day by assembling at Herbert Hoover Middle School for a check in and group photo. I kept my rainbow hair clip on from our Reconciling Sunday event which occurred earlier in the day.

As I’ve enjoyed doing for other athletic events, including my first marathon, which I’ll be posting photos of tomorrow for Throw Back Thursday, I wore something with a tiara theme. This time it was Princess Cinderella sunglasses. While I usually wear things related to one of my favorite princesses, Aurora from The Little Mermaid, this year I liked the colors and style best of these, and it was fun shout out to Candy as Cinderella is her favorite princess.

The colors of the sunglasses just happened to match perfectly my brain/thinking cap which I wore in honor of Earth Day which was the day before and my walkathon. I really love the details on the cap and many people delighted in it when they figured out what it represented. By pure coincidence, the glasses also matched perfectly the Crop Walk t shirt that our organizer, Bruce, gave me to commemorate my first walk with the team.

There was a band of school children playing to send us off on our walk.

Although we were given maps, I was assured there would be lots of signs along the way to guide us. This was the first one I saw that guided us to walk completely around the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden.

One of the main attractions to the event was the Rose Garden itself. I had heard that the event went around it, and had thought we actually we would be going through the beautiful rows of rose bushes. Instead, we walked around it, though there were beautiful roses all around the surrounding gate as seen on the photos on the left. There were beautiful roses around the homes along the way including this beautiful and memorable purple one shown in the photo on the right.

I had asked Dr. G months in advance if I would be able to do the entire 3 miles. While he warned me not to treat it as a race or speed walk the event, he said assuming I was still feeling good on the day of at the time, I would be good to go to walk the entire event. So upon seeing this sign splitting the event into it’s options of a one mile walk and a three mile one, I did a quick assessment of how I was feeling.

I was lucky in that though my fellow church members did not stay together as a whole group the entire time, I had at least one or more members to walk with the whole time. The pace we walked, while a bit faster than the one I’d have set for myself as a naturally slow walker, was one I had adapted to and I knew I’d be up to finishing the event, so I joined those going in the 3 mile direction.

Although our local hockey team, The San Jose Sharks  had ironically the night before been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs, there were still several displays supporting the sharks among the local businesses.

There were also signs of support along the way for the walkers and water stations including one run by a local Boy Scout troop.

Though I’ve walked and run much longer distances, it was with pride that I finished this event while three months pregnant. Back at the school we were provided with water, brownies and cookies, I tried a brownie but stopped at one as I’m trying to only have a little sugar here and then while pregnant. One of the walk leaders lent me her sign for one final photo.

I greatly enjoyed this event and look forward to participating again next year.

~ Danielle