Why I Keep Walking: 2026 Edition

On November 13–15, I’ll be walking in the San Diego Susan G. Komen 3-Day. It will be my 26th 3-Day as a walker. Add 16 events as a crewmember, including Boston this year, and that makes 42 since I started in 2008.

I know that my walking does not cure breast cancer. I’m not expecting to round a corner in some leafy suburb one Saturday afternoon, hear a loud chime, see fireworks overhead, and hear a voice announce, “Jay! You’ve found the CURE!”

Although that would be very, very cool.

What walking does is give me a way to help fund the work. Research, clinical trials, education programs, mammograms, and assistance with the costs of treatment all require money. With the generosity of my sponsors, and contributions of my own, I’ve raised more than $73,000 over the years. I hope that has made a difference.

Money being fungible, I can’t point to a particular dollar and say that it helped fund a particular discovery. But it’s nice to imagine that somewhere along the way, some of those dollars helped a researcher pursue an idea, or helped someone get care they needed.

Collectively, the 3-Day community has raised more than $927 million since 2003, according to Komen’s 2026 impact summary. Nearly a billion dollars. My part of that is small, but it is a part.

When I first got involved, I wanted to make a positive difference in the world somehow. With my 42nd event approaching, I still do. But over the years, that rather general wish has acquired names and faces.

I have been unusually fortunate: I haven’t had to watch a close family member go through breast cancer. I hope that remains true. I walk for my nieces. I walk for my sister. I hope none of them ever has to hear that diagnosis.

I walk for the 28-year-old woman I met during the 2011 San Francisco Bay Area 3-Day. Dense breast tissue had made her cancer harder to detect, delaying her diagnosis. Afterward, she learned that she carried a BRCA mutation. She told me she wasn’t walking for herself. She was walking for her two daughters, who might have inherited it too. Alongside everything she was facing herself, she carried that fear for them.

I walk for the woman who was 84 when she outpaced and outwalked me heading up Juan Street in San Diego in 2021. A forty-year breast cancer survivor, she had done at least as many walks as I had and showed no sign of slowing down. I admire her guts and tenacity. I also remember the experience of trying to keep up with her.

I walk for the bald woman at the 2008 Washington, DC 3-Day who heard us griping about the hill near Walter Reed Hospital and called out, “IT BEATS CHEMO!”

We shut up, tipped our hats to her, and kept going.

I walk for all the women whose smiling faces we see on the Remembrance Wall at camp, and whose names and photographs we encounter along the Memorial Mile. They are gone. They are remembered and loved, and they are part of why we come back.

I walk for Jennifer Arnott, a fellow member of Richmond Congregational Church, who died in April 2025 after a long and painful fight against cancer. We miss her very much.

And most of all, I walk for Bridget Spence. Diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer at 21, she spent her twenties undergoing treatment after treatment and participating in clinical trials, hoping for more time. She died just short of her thirtieth birthday.

We all miss her so much.

Those are some of the people I carry with me when I walk. Some I knew; some I met for only a few minutes. All of them have stayed with me.

To everyone who has sponsored me this year, and everyone who has supported my walks over the years: thank you. Whether you’ve given once or many times since 2008, your generosity has helped turn my wish to do something useful into actual funding for this work. I am grateful.

For this year’s San Diego walk, I’ve raised $2,874 toward my $3,000 goal. If you’d like to help me cover the remaining $126, I would very much appreciate it. And if your generosity happens to carry me beyond $3,000, you will hear no objections from me. There is plenty of work left to fund.

You can contribute at the3day.org/goto/jayfurr.

Thank you for helping, and for remembering these people with me.