To honor her mother, a victim of breast cancer, Claudia Lindsey laced up her most comfortable pair of shoes and headed out on a three-day walk that covered more than 60 miles.

Flanked by her daughter Vanessa Lindsey, her close friend Kelly Preston and her daughter's friend Cassie Hopper, Claudia's team-the Walking Warriors-joined more than 2,400 other walkers last week in the Three Day to help the Susan G. Komen Foundation find a cure for the disease.

The decision to commit to three days of fast walking, aching thighs and countless blisters was, Claudia said, an easy one to make.

"Once the kids graduated, I wanted to be active," said Claudia, a veteran of now two complete Three Day walks. "I'm not really an athletic person."

Claudia said her close friend Kelly, who lost her grandmother to breast cancer, pushed her to train and participate this year.

The two paired with Claudia's daughter, Vanessa and her friend Cassie-both 2000 Thomas Jefferson grads-to make a team to walk for a cure.

Familiar with the walk's toll on her body, Claudia trained harder and more appropriately for this year's event.

"Last year I had five large blisters and lost two toenails," said Claudia, a resident of Federal Way who works at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, "This year I've learned the tricks of the trade."

She and Kelly began training in February and focused their energy on building up back-to-back days of walking 10 or more miles.

Claudia said she tried to work out as much as possible, and added that she even found time for a three-mile walk during her lunch break up and down the steep hills of Seattle.

She also relied on Vanessa's athleticism and her daughter's no-quit attitude to prepare her both mentally and physically for the event.

"Vanessa just has that athlete's mentality," Claudia said, "She's really able to ignore pain and keep going."

"She really helped us a lot by leading us in stretching," Claudia added.

"I'm now a firm believer in the value of stretching," she said.

The team often trained in the Alki area of West Seattle, which served as a centralized location for Kelly, from Edmonds, and Vanessa and Cassie of Puyallup.

The walk required that each participant raise at least $2,200 to join in the walk, and Claudia admits that this objective became perhaps the most difficult obstacle her team faced.

"Vanessa is struggling to meet her goal," Claudia said. "At her age, a lot of her friends in their mid-to-late twenties don't really have a lot of cash to give to these kinds of causes."

On September 7, the Walking Warriors met at 5 a.m. to register and begin the opening festivities of the Three Day.

The kickoff the 2,300 walkers received paid tribute to a group of more than 400 breast cancer survivors, and made for an intensely emotional and visually stimulating start akin to the opening festivities of the Olympic Games.

"It was incredibly emotional and at the same time very motivational," Claudia said.

With so many people participating impacted by the disease, "there was definitely a lot of crying," she added.

At 6:30, the Walking Warriors headed out on their first push of more than 20 miles.

The team made their way through a sea of pink-and-white-clad participants from around the country.

"We walked across Mercer Island and across the I-90 bridge," Claudia said, "and there was a boat of people cheering us on while we were on the bridge."

The 23-mile day ended with a push up a long hill, and most of the walkers pitched their pink tents camped out.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the experience, Claudia said, came in the form of the incredible support the walkers received from the community.

"The South End was very supportive," Claudia said. "There was a large cheering station at Highline Community College,"

One of the most generous examples of the widespread public support they received came during the peak of caffeine withdrawal fit the Walking Warriors sought to cure in an Alki-area Tully's.

"We stopped in to get a coffee with a bunch of other walkers," Claudia recounted, "and some anonymous patron paid for everyone's coffee."

During the last stretch on the third day of the walk, Cassie received a big push of encouragement as the Walking Warriors made their way down First Avenue in Seattle.

"Cassie had a sore calf and was limping," Claudia said, "and one of the big bouncers from the Showbox walked with her for several blocks, cheering her along the whole way."

When they arrived at the finished line, the women's husbands greeted them, clad in pink and white as well.

The Walking Warriors met hundreds of other participants during their three day walk, and passed the time by sharing stories with new friends who shared the same objective.

"There were people from all over," Claudia said. "We met two sisters who farm in Oregon, and two sisters from Kansas City who wanted to walk in every Three Day around the country."

The Walking Warriors also met a mother-daughter pair dressed as Wonder Woman, and a teenager from Snohomish who participated in the event for her senior project.

"It's like you're walking with 2,300 friends that you didn't even know you had," Claudia said.

If you would like to help Vanessa meet her goal, log on to www.thethreeday.org and search for donations by her name, Vanessa Lindsey.