As Tina McDonough approached the cheering station at Bellevue Downtown Park she lifted her arms over her head in celebration of the first leg of a 60-mile journey.

Most of her team, the Valley Girls & Guys, would stop for lunch and a rest in the park after walking about a dozen miles — though one walker said they trekked closer to 15 miles according to his pedometer — but McDonough stopped to chat with the team’s sponsors as well as get photos with some of the members of VGG.

Decked out in a black long sleeve shirt under a pink team tank top, the traditional pink straw cowboy hat and a pink tutu over shorts, McDonough didn’t plan to stop long. There were many more steps to go even before the first day of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 3-Day Walk for the Cure was over. By the end of Sunday the Valley Girls & Guys — 140 pounded the pavement while a number of others were unable to make it due to injury — walked 60 miles to raise money to fight breast cancer.

“It’s going great today,” McDonough said. “We’ve got a lot of new walkers. Historically only one-third return. We have 60 percent to 70 percent return.”

Officials from the Puget Sound affiliate of the Komen foundation told her a few years ago that many only do it once because it is an item on their so-called bucket lists. It is so much more for McDonough and those who walk with her.

This is a cause which has transformed McDonough’s life and many others as they have joined her in the fight. It began in 2007 when she and three others did the walk for the first time in honor of her friend, Michelle, who lost the battle with breast cancer.

“For us, it’s because of the teamwork, we fundraise together, we do events together,” McDonough said. “Because of all the fund raising we did, I only did four or five training walks.”

McDonough is a veteran, though, having walked the 3-Day in Seattle a half dozen times now and made the trip to San Diego, too. She also walked with the team in the Komen foundation’s Race for the Cure in Seattle in June as well as at the Wings of Karen Bra Dash at Lake Wilderness Park Sept. 15.

She is thankful for the support of the sponsors. Pinnacle Physical Therapy, for example, provided space for the team to meet. Re/Max Select, where she works, “has been amazing.”

Patti Jenson of All State Insurance in Four Corners was at the cheering station the first day with water and treats then provided pink ponchos for the rainy third day of the event.

Trapper’s Sushi in Covington is hosting an event from 5-9 p.m. Oct. 14. Owners of the restaurant will donate all of the proceeds from those hours to Valley Girls & Guys.

“It’s huge,” McDonough said of the support from the sponsors. “We’re nobody if we don’t have our sponsors and we can’t keep doing what we do every year without them.”

And what they do is raise a bunch of money. This year Valley Girls & Guys raised more than $324,000 and they were just shy of the $1.5 million mark over six years. The team is the largest in the state and it continues to grow.

There were 13 survivors on the team this year, including one who flew from Boston in part because she went through treatment in the region.

As the third day wound down, the entire team walked together across the finish line, a wall of pink fighting breast cancer in the best way they know how. McDonough, who has two daughters, wants to make the disease something her girls won’t have to worry about.

When the walking gets tough, McDonough has no trouble remembering why she is out, wearing pink, missing her beloved Seattle Seahawks play, battling through it all.

“I feel like I don’t have a choice because if I don’t walk, I feel like I’m giving up on my survivors,” McDonough said.

If there is one thing she does not know how to do, giving up is it, and there will be more celebrations in the future for McDonough as well as the Valley Girls & Guys.