Day 9

Delta, UT ➡️ Salt Lake City, UT

Day 9 was a great pre-rest day adventure; we each added another 10 miles to our total individual mileages, and we made it to Salt Lake City. For the evenings of days 9-10, we were able to stay in the Vivint Smart Home Arena (Home of the Utah Jazz), which was awesome. We slept in a locker room and were able to play knockout and shoot around on the court, and we even had our “why” meeting at the center of the court.

The “why” meeting is something that every 4K team does toward the beginning of their journey; each person (if they want to; almost all of us shared) has the opportunity to tell his/her story in as much depth as desired, which really allows us to get to know each other intimately and pour our hearts out to each other. In total, our “why” meeting was probably about 6 hours, which we ended up splitting up over the course of a couple of evenings because of emotional and physical exhaustion. Those of us who spoke about our lives and reasons behind our involvement in 4K were able to truly express our emotions and experiences surrounding our connections to cancer and our lives in general; it was a truly special bonding experience filled with raw emotion and love that has allowed us all to connect in ways I had not expected. I am truly grateful for the vulnerable yet incredibly loving and trusting environment that the meeting cultivated in our team. I am beginning to more fully understand what makes 4K teams inseparable by the end of the summer.