Oh yes they did! My team, Trust Your Journey, climbed 576 stairs (36 flights) with 32 feet smacking down on a stair that case winds all the way up to the top of the Silver Legacy Resort Casino in Reno, NV! This is our fifth year Climbing the Legacy, sponsored by the American Lung Association in Northern Nevada. Our team gets better and more interesting every year! Our goal is to raise at least $100 per person, in which almost all of our funds raised stay right here in our community for programs that change lives and work towards clean and healthy air and lung health. As an Open Airways for Schools Instructor, I have been honored and humbled as I witnessed the lives of children with asthma change right before my eyes during the course of this program. Kids move from “out of control” asthma while missing insane amounts of school days to learning how to live “in control” of their asthma and staying in school! The programs work.
Trust Your Journey stair climb team
What is truly fun at the Climb is the fire fighters! The various agencies in the area join the climb and go up all 36 flights in full turnout gear! Some Trust Your Journey team little boys showed up in their little fire fighter outfits to “hang with the big dogs”. The climbers are timed and ascend in order of speed after the fire fighters. First go up the elite runners to take on those stairs in around 4 minutes or so, then groups doing special things, such as climbing with weighted vests or going up twice and the various challenges go on until you get down to the few of us who saunter. I did not climb this year since I did not train and my asthma is not fully under control right now. We’re working on find me the right kind of maintenance medication.
Doug modeling his homemade “manly” version of the Trust Your Journey team shirt! Note Karen in the back ground coaching his moves – she made the shirt too!
My pal, Ruth, co-founder and co-owner of Trust Your Journey sponsored our seriously adorable shirts (check out her inspirational website, which is a community of women trusting their journey and you can buy inspirational jewelery, tee shirts on her site too-sorry for the shameless plug, but I wear my Trust Your Journey necklace almost everyday and love it the reminder). Now, I confess that our men folk get ripped off since we haven’t developed a manly kind of shirt for them, but since we had a record number of men join our team this year, I think we’ll be forced to create something for them next year. That record number is…. two. Not to be left out in the cold, Doug wore his “own” version of our shirt while Ben opted for the official American Lung Association Fight for Clean Air tee shirt.
Father and son love at the Stair Climb!
Of course, since our team is quite spirited, we brought our own tent, food galore, bubbles, PlayDoh® and drinks. We had gluten, egg, dairy free, nut free and soy free homemade goodies, including a salsa so good it could make you cry is was so beautiful (props to Lauren, author of Peeled Apart To Find the Heart)! We even had organic dye free candy that almost all of the kids ignored?! The party was over at Team Trust Your Journey’s tent. There were grandmas and husbands on hand to cheer everyone on, hold purses and watch kids while the climbers went up, up, up! The day was fun, the cause was smack on wonderful and hopefully, as the funds continue to come in we made a big difference! Here is my shameless last ditch plug for donations to the Trust Your Journey team: just click here to donate to our team and click on anyone’s name to donate!
Karen modeling our shirts, which stated, “Wherever Life Takes You–Trust Your Journey”
One of the hardest things I find about managing both life threatening food allergies and asthma is talking to others. I hate to be the one that might be perceived as demanding, pushing or for asking too much. What I now know, fourteen years later, is that honest, clear information presented with kindness works!..
Way to go!
Thanks for your Support Selena! I was bummed I couldn’t go up but I just didn’t want to find out that my asthma is not controlled…yet! It was sooo much fun! Wish you were here in Reno!
Wonderful! Great job!