Comstock, Clark raising cash for Seattle Komen walk
Greg Knight
Beth Comstock and Megan Clark on a training walk for the 2012 Susan G. Komen Walk For The Cure last week along the Zimovia Highway bike and exercise path. Comstock and Clark need to raise a total of $4,600 by September to take part in the Seattle-based event.
Everyone knows that walking and brisk exercise is good for your health. In fact, the philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche might have said it best when he spoke of walking.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking,” Nietzsche said.
For two Wrangellites, the idea of walking – in search of a cure for breast cancer – was conceived during the past six months and will take them to Seattle in search of that cure.
Beth Comstock and Megan Clark will travel to the Emerald City in mid-September to take part in the 2012 Susan G. Komen Walk For The Cure, a scenic 60-mile course that will last for three days and help raise money to fight breast cancer.
Both Comstock and Clark are spending the coming months training – and raising a minimum of $2,300 apiece to afford the entry fee for the event.
For Comstock, in particular, the fight to raise money to eradicate the disease is a personal fight as well.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago,” Comstock said. “As I heard the doctor say those words to me, my world started spinning and every decision I made for the next couple of months was based around how my family would survive without me.”
Thankfully, Comstock’s diagnosis was a false positive.
“It really showed to me how much, as a society, we need to eradicate this disease. There is no reason in this time and place that we still have to deal with something like breast cancer,” Comstock said.
During the next three months, Comstock and Clark said they plan on spending a lot of their time training for the 60-mile course.
“We have been doing some cross-training individually,” Comstock said. “We have also been meeting every weekend and slowly increasing our distance.”
The pair began their regimen with two-mile walks and will be increasing that distance to eighteen-mile treks by mid-August.
“The most difficult part of getting ready for this is finding the time,” Clark said. “Especially with a toddler and husband. The walking is going great, though. I just load up my iPod and disappear for a couple hours.”
Comstock loads her iPod up as well – with an aptly titled album.
“I listen to the Bloodhound Gang ‘Hooray For Boobies’ album when I get out and do my workout,” Comstock said.
While in Seattle, the pair will not be staying in hotels, but hot pink tents.
It’s a prospect Comstock said makes her happy.
“I’m so excited to be sleeping in pink tents,” she said. “It brings out the inner 12-year-old in me.”
Entrants to the 2011 walk raised more than $5.3 million for breast cancer research and education programs.
The pair is hopeful their actions will help end breast cancer and provide women suffering from the disease with a better life.
“I’m doing this because I lost my grandmother to breast cancer in 2010,” Clark said of her motivation to walk. “My mom also does all the mammograms here in Wrangell, so it is a nice way to support her.”
The pair needs to raise a combined fundraising total of $4,600 by Sept. 1 in order to take part in the walk.
“We have been sending out emails and working on a bakeless bakesale,” Comstock said. “We are also setting up donation jars around town. People can also stop us around town because we will have donation forms with us.”
Any donations made directly to the Susan G. Komen Foundation on behalf of the pair are tax-deductible.