Fundraising
While my fundraising total hasn't increased very much this week, I did do quite a bit to help raise money for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure this week.
First and foremost, I posted our wrap up for our series of team fundraising contests over on the Relentless Optimism team blog. All told, our series of seven contests netted $580 for our team. We had a total of 56 people take part in at least one contest and 24 people that participated in two or more contests. For each contest, we asked for a $10 donation to the team per entry and then paid out half the money collected for each contest to the winner of that contest. That means that in the end, the duplicate entries accounted for more than half of the money that we collected. Amazing. To read more about the conclusion of our fundraising contest series, please see this post on the Relentless Optimism team blog.
This past week also marked a shift into high gear promoting our team fundraiser with Flower Power fundraising. Blog posts were made, reminders were posted to Facebook and Twitter, over 100 emails were sent out to friends and family... my teammates and I are really pushing this one hard. As of today, our team stands to make at least $667 through this collaboration and we're hoping to push that total even higher before the contest ends on Thursday. Buy some flowers today!!
In addition to promoting Flower Power, I also used Tax Day to urge my Facebook friends to think about donating a portion of their tax returns to the Breast Cancer 3 Day. I was going to write my own post about it, but seriously, Cat of Fat Girl Walkin' said it better than I could have, so I just linked to her post. If you haven't read her post yet, I highly recommend it. Finally, I also took part in Betties for Boobies team member Jackie's "Blogging for a Cure" fundraiser on Wednesday. You can read what I wrote as part of that event in this post. It's all about raising money for Susan G. Komen, even if it isn't helping my own personal fundraising goals.
After all of that, my fundraising total currently stands at $1645, plus that pesky check that I still haven't sent in. Rest assured, I filled out the donation form today, so that's going in the mail first thing tomorrow morning! I also received one donation this week from my old high school and college friend Andrea. Andrea and I have known each other since second grade and despite going to both high school and college together, we've drifted apart in recent years. Facebook helped me reconnect with her and now she's helping me and my teammates to reach our goals which means the world to me. Thank you so much Andrea for both your donation and your kind note!
Training
Training for the 3 Day this week went very well. I made up my missed walk from last week on Monday, then tacked on a three mile walk on Tuesday, five miles on Thursday, ten miles on Saturday and another six+ miles today. Altogether, I walked 33.1 miles last week, my highest weekly total by eight miles! I'm definitely starting to develop some serious callouses on my feet from all this walking, especially on the insides of my heels and big toes. No pedicures for me anytime soon.
I marked my first time this year over 10 miles with my first walk of the "season" up on the Silver Comet Trail. For those that don't know, the Silver Comet is a 61 mile long paved trail that stretches from northwest Atlanta to the Alabama border. The Silver Comet follows old railroad beds, meaning that it is relatively flat and scenic. It's also very well maintained. There are regular trailheads every few miles with parking lots, bathrooms and drinking fountains and there are mile markers all along the trail. I LOVE walking on the Silver Comet, especially for longer walks. It was great to finally get back up there this week!
Hanging out with Shenanigans during a pit stop at the Floyd Road Trailhead on the Silver Comet. Mile 6.5 of 10 miles!
I will say that I was feeling a little sore by the end of the day on Saturday, especially on my heels and in my right hip. I'm chalking that up to the first long walk with a full pack, not enough stretching and the fact that I decided to hit up the Dogwood Festival AFTER my long walk. Between walking to and from the festival (which was down the street from my house) and wandering the park during the festival, I figure that tacked another 4 miles of walking onto my day. In flip flops. Duh. Of course I was sore and beat tired after that! I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I woke up this morning and wasn't really all that sore at all. Good to know I can bounce back quickly since there are no off days on the 3 Day!
Now, as for my training to run in the Atlanta Race for the Cure... well, that was a different story. I knocked out my first two runs successfully on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then on Friday, I totally "bonked" my run, as my friend Cliff said. I wasn't in the mood to run, my legs felt heavy from the extra miles on Monday, it was hot, I didn't have a lot of time... it was just not a good day for running. On top of that, I was totally intimidated by the whole "run 25 minutes with no walking" stage of the Couch to 5K plan. I'm pretty proud of myself that I still got out to run at all, but I did not even come close to running the full 25 minutes.
After thinking about it for a few days, I think I know what I need to do going forward with this running plan. For me, the biggest hurdle by far is the mental challenge. I haven't had too much trouble stretching out my intervals to 10 minutes, even with increasingly shorter walk breaks in between. However, the Couch to 5K plan is designed to stretch you out to that 10 minute interval, then have your two 10 min + intervals "meet in the middle" to make one long run. That big jump in running time sans break seriously intimidates me. I think I'll be better served by just continuing to stretch out my first interval by a few extra minutes each run until I'm at a solid 30 minutes (which is my goal for the Atlanta Race for the Cure). So rather than running a solid 25 minutes for my three runs this week (as prescribed), I'm going to follow this plan instead:
- Run 1: 10 min running, 2 min walk, 10 min running, 2 min walk, 5 min running
- Run 2: 13 min running, 2 min walk, 12 min running
- Run 3: 15 min running, 2 min walk, 10 min running
Extra Stuff
As I said last week, any time that wasn't spent fundraising or training this week was really focused on my school work. I did manage to write two short posts updating the information for the 3 Day Preview Expos and the Atlanta Race for the Cure and I also put together my usual 3 Day Links on Friday. I also was thrilled to find out that my college roommate Michelle took advantage of the current discount registration offer and officially registered for the Medical Crew in Boston this week as part of Relentless Optimism! Welcome Michelle! Other than that, though, things were really quiet on the blog front other than fundraising activities.Here's what did happen this week: I got a lot of new 3 Day stuff. Like, all kinds of stuff. First, I received an awesome package from Julie of the Two Pink Chicks Fo(u)r Boobs team to (completely unnecessarily) thank me for following her blog. She sent me one of her team t-shirts (which I'm wearing right now!) and an awesome magnet for my car which you can see in the photo on the right. She's selling the magnets on her blog for $5 a pop, so if you want one (and you know you do), you should head over here to read more about ordering them. Thank you Julie!
I also was the recipient of a digital gift from Leanne of Leanne... the Walker this week. After seeing her awesome self-designed thank you notes on her blog, I just had to ask for the .jpg file so that I could get some for myself. Leanne was more than happy to oblige which was incredibly nice of her. I'm going to be ordering my fair share of thank you notes and post cards this week plus now I have the perfect thank you image for future blog posts!
Thank you Leanne!
Finally, I took myself shopping at Dick's Sporting Goods on Friday to load up on gear that I think I can convince my husband that I really needed for the 3 Day. I got a couple new pairs of Nike Tempo shorts (both with pink accents!) and some badly needed new sports bras as well. I also grabbed a few new pairs of socks to start my search for my next great pair of 3 Day socks. There will certainly be more on that in the future. For now though, if you have a pair of socks that you really like for walking, let me know in the comments so I can try them out. And last but certainly not least, I got a new stick of Body Glide because you can never have enough Body Glide. It actually came in really handy with my flip flops when I was walking around the Dogwood Festival this weekend.
Coming Up Next Week...
Next week's fundraising activities will be almost entirely focused on the last few days of the Flower Power Fundraiser. The last day for orders is on Thursday, and I would love to bring in at least another $100 before then. Other than that, it will probably be pretty quiet on the fundraising front other than me saying this a lot:
Buy stuff from Amazon! (Please!)
I already covered my running plans in the training section above. I'm back to the regular schedule, so I'm hoping leg fatigue won't be a problem this week. The 24 week training schedule for the 3 Day calls for the same distance walks as last week, so that's what I'll be doing.
And beyond that, I honestly have no idea what I'll be doing besides lots and lots of school work. By the end of the first week of May, I'll be back to more "active" blogging, I promise.
Search Amazon.com for Body Glide
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