Three 3 Day Weeks in Review!

It's been a couple weeks since I've done a proper Week in Review post and we have a lot to catch up on.  As I mentioned in this short post, my life has gotten very busy over the last few weeks as I cruise towards the finish line of my graduate school career.  In addition to all of my school work, 3 Day preparations have been in overdrive, as you can imagine.  Unfortunately, that hasn't left me with very much time for blogging lately.  However, with the Boston 3 Day for the Cure less than two weeks away, I wanted to make sure that everyone was up to date!

Fundraising

In my last Week in Review post, I mentioned that I was hoping to break the $3000 mark in my fundraising that week.  Through the generosity of my friends and family, I am thrilled to say that I blew right past $3000 just a few short days later!  Since then, I have received a number of donations both as checks and online donations, bringing my fundraising total online to $3581.97, plus $135 in checks that I just sent in today.  

In addition to the amazing number of direct donations I have received over the previous three weeks, we also wrapped up our final team fundraiser, our Mary Kay sale.  The reports are that we didn't do very well with this particular sale, although I'm not sure what the final numbers were.  Regardless of the final totals, every little bit counts towards the final goal of finding a cure for breast cancer, so I will take it.  Oh, and speaking of every little bit counts, we also received our first payment from our partnership with Amazon Associates.  That donation, which covered the money we made for the month of April, was for a total of $33, which meant each of us walkers received $8, which is $8 more than I had before!

I still have quite a ways to go if I want to reach my personal goal of raising $5000 and our team goal of $20,000, both of which I intend to pursue right up until the final deadline (which is four weeks post-event).  Because I have pushed over $700 to my teammates, I am actually only $578.03 away from my personal goal.  That is a goal that I feel is very much within reach.  As for our team goal, we're going to have to work really hard to reach that goal.  We set our goal of $20,000 when we thought we were going to have six walkers, so that might be a little lofty.  However, I think that raising $15,000 as a team is very doable, so that is what I am focused on at this point.

Finally, I of course need to thank everyone that has donated to me over the past week:  Kristen Kleehamer, Lesley Couch, Dom Gambardella, Brandi Hanback, Marsha and Dean Griswold, Cornelia Steinert Magee, Clay Perry, Rex Sager, Lloyd and Debbie Shelley, Glen and Marsha Petaja (who noted that their donation was made in memory of Kathy McBride) and my grandmother Reba Sager.  I also wanted to recognize my friend Andrea Cecconi and her fiance'e Dave who graciously offered to raise money on behalf of our team during the Cecconi family Fourth of July party.  Andrea and Dave were able to raise over $200 for us and we are extremely grateful to them for their efforts! 

Training

Wow, training has been on OVERDRIVE over the last three weeks!  

First, let's talk about my training walks.  Two of the last three weeks have featured my two most intense training weekends.  Three weeks ago, I completed "The Big One", the recommended 18 mile/15 mile back to back walks.  Of course, I miscalculated my miles on the second day and I ended up actually walking 18 miles on both days!  I took my new camera along with me all weekend and took tons of pictures as I roamed all around Atlanta.  You can read all about those training walks and check out my pictures here.  The next weekend was a much needed recovery walking weekend (which I, of course, spent running instead, as you'll read below).  This past weekend, though, it was right back to walking!  The training schedule called for 18 miles on Saturday and just 8 miles on Sunday.  However, because I wanted to catch up on some miles that I missed earlier in the week and because I can't seem to add up my miles properly on Map My Run, I actually ended up walking 21 miles on Saturday and 12 miles on Sunday.  I documented those training walks through Atlanta and at Stone Mountain in this post, also complete with pictures.  

Ultimately, my walking over the past three weeks breaks down like this:

• Week 1: 41.5 miles
• Week 2: 16.3 miles
• Week 3: 41.4 miles

With those miles in "the bank", I have now walked 570.63 miles since the start of training!  600 miles is so close, I can taste it!

In addition to all of that crazy walking, I also finished up my great running experiment last week when my husband Mike and I ran in the Peachtree Road Race on the Fourth of July.  This was our first 10K and I'm thrilled with our final time of 1 hour 7 minutes and 29 seconds.  You read all about our race adventure in this post.  Leading up to the race, I did my best to beat the heat and got in a few early morning training runs.  The training mileage for the two weeks before the race breaks down like this:

• Week 1: 10.9 miles
• Week 2: 11.9 miles, including the race!

All told, I ran 142.3 miles since I started training for the Race for the Cure back in early March.  This is by far the most I've ever run and I'm really proud of myself that I was able to stick to it all the way to the end.  I'm going to take a little bit of a break from running over these last couple weeks before the 3 Day, but then I suspect I will be back out running again.  Mike has a 5K he wants us to run in August, so that might be the race on the calendar.  Who knew we would become such running nuts?

Throughout this training, the most difficult thing to deal with has been the heat.  It took a wonderfully well-timed over 4th of July weekend, but for the most part, I've been out walking in 95 to 100 degree temps most days.  As I've mentioned before, I'm fairly heat tolerant.  My biggest issue was the road rash that I developed during my 18/15 training walks.  Apparently, it's a fairly common reaction to the asphalt fumes and it went away in a few days, but man, it was annoying.  Hopefully that doesn't come back during the event.  Otherwise, my only ailments are a couple small blisters on my toes and some large heel callouses that can get pretty sore on those longer walks.  All in all though, provided my heel callous doesn't rip in the next two weeks, I think I'm ready!

Extra Stuff

Obviously, as a reader of my blog, you have probably noticed that I haven't done much blogging over the past few weeks.  I've managed to post a couple small things (like this post about a familiar looking mannequin at the gear store and this post about my training partner's injury), but otherwise, the blog has been pretty quiet.

What I have been doing is finalizing plans both for myself and on behalf of my team and our families and friends that will be traveling with us to Boston.  As of right now, though, our hotels are booked and our plane tickets have been bought.  We have ordered our team shirts (that were generously paid for by Diana Moreland and her business Diana's Costume Closet) and I can't wait for them to be delivered.  We also decided to order a banner for our team as our way of giving all of our donors and sponsors the public recognition that they deserve (check it out here!).  Finally, all of our teammates have completed online check in, the last big step before we get to Boston.  I think I can finally say that WE ARE READY!

Coming Up Next Week...

As of right now, there are 10 days until the Boston 3 Day kicks off and just 8 days before Mike and I fly up to Boston!  That doesn't leave a lot of time to get much else done.  I do have a few things that I am hoping to accomplish in that small window.  First, I am hoping to send out another round of fundraising letters before I leave.  I think it is a common misconception that donations can only be made prior to the event and I want to remind my friends and family that haven't donated yet that there is still time.  So that will be one project this week.  I am also planning a number of training walks, the longest of which will be a relatively short 10 miles.  I am about 16 miles behind on the recommended training schedule, and being the obsessive that I am, I would love get caught up before I leave.  However, my work load may make that a little difficult, so I am just going to have to do what I can when I can.  Even if I don't get in all the miles, I've been training hard for six months, so I feel pretty prepared.  And other than that, I am just going to be handling things as they come up and finalizing a couple last details about cheering stations and our team dinner.

Oh!  I can't forget to mention that our hometown paper up in Cortland, New York is going to be running an article about our team later this week that I cannot wait for!  So exciting!

So that's all from my end.  I can't believe the 3 Day is so soon!  I'm really starting to get excited about everything!! 

Search Amazon.com for Pink Luggage Tags

My 3 Day Week in Review!

With the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure just over a month away, things are really start to pick up now!

Fundraising

Fundraising was a major focus this week, with two very important events taking place:

1.  All of our pending donations from our Flower Power fundraiser have now been deposited into our 3 Day accounts.  Because this fundraiser was such a huge success for our team, we wanted to wait until closer to the event so that we could make those deposits to our teammates who were the most in need of the donations.  Yesterday, I processed almost $800 worth of donations for myself and my teammates which served to put our team fundraising total at over $10,000! 

2.  Because of the Flower Power donations and some other outstanding large donations that haven't posted yet, we can officially say that all four of the walkers on our team have now passed their $2300 fundraising minimums!  

As a result of those two things, all of the donations that I personally receive going forward will be credited directly towards my personal $5000 goal and all of the money raised through our team fundraisers (like our ongoing Mary Kay fundraiser!) will be split evenly among the four of us. 

In pursuit of my $5000 goal, I spent some time this past week contacting one of my greatest group of past supporters - my mom's friends and colleagues.  As I mentioned in this post, Mom works as a self-employed consultant, which means she does business with a lot of different people.  And the people that she works with think the world of her.  They have seen her fight with breast cancer first hand and have often been more than generous in showing their support for her through donations to the 3 Day.  

Not surprisingly, those letters have already resulted in a number of donations this past week.  All together, I received four online donations totaling $201.25 and two additional checks worth another $50.  Together with my $121.25 share of the Flower Power money, that officially puts my fundraising total to date at $2773.50, once those two checks post.  

Of course, I have to recognize and thank my very generous donors this week:  Peggy Lynch (a childhood friend of my mom's), Karen Gibson and David Ostheimer (both work associates of my mom's), Ward and Joann Dukelow, Doug and Lydia Warfield and finally, Ron Barrows.  Ron is the father of the fifth member of the Mag 5 who is unable to walk with us in Boston but who is very much a part of our team in spirit.  Ron made his donation to our entire team and we are incredibly grateful to him and to all of our donors for their wonderful support!

Training

I was able to focus so much on fundraising this week because this week was a wonderful, much needed recovery week for training.  Unfortunately, while I had less miles to walk this week, the weather wasn't any more forgiving.  I mentioned last week that we were having to deal with some seriously intense heat down here in the South.  According to this article from the local news station, we have officially had temps in the 90s every day for the last 10 days, with at least seven more days of similar temperatures coming up this week.  While I can tolerate walking in the heat fairly well, I'm finding it almost impossible to complete some of these longer runs.  As a result, I've actually been getting up before dawn to get my runs in in the early morning hours before the heat really settles in.  That may not sound like much (especially given that my teammates with kids regularly get up at 4am to train!), but I am the least morning person ever.  There was a lot of swearing at the alarm clock, but hey, at least I got my runs in!

This past week, I walked 28.9 miles and I ran another 10.8 miles.  That brings my walking total to date to a robust 471.43 miles and my running total to 119.5 miles.  And trust me, all of that training has definitely been paying off!  I feel stronger every day!

Extra Stuff

If you were just watching my blog, you might think that I hadn't done much else this week, 3 Day - wise.  However, I have been hard at work finalizing all of our plans and making last minute preparations for the 3 Day instead!  We booked our hotel for Sunday night, we've started designing our team shirts and we're just beginning to talk about tent decorations - all fun stuff!  I also got myself down to Phidippides to pick up my second pair of sneakers for the 3 Day.  With just five weeks left before the 3 Day, I really need to get to work breaking them in!

Of course, the most important thing that I did this week was complete Online Check-In.  It's all officially happening now!

Coming Up Next Week...

In the 3 Day vernacular, this next week is what is commonly known as "The Big One".   That's because this week is the single greatest recommended weekly mileage on the 24 and 16 week training schedules! This week will see 5 and 6 mile walks during the week and will culminate with an 18 mile walk on Saturday and a 15 mile walk on Sunday for a total of 44 miles!  Because of the significance of those big back to back walks, I'm hoping to plan some extra fun ways to spice up my walks like I did with Kelly back in 2008 for our 17 mile/13 mile training weekend.  I can't wait to pass the 500 mile mark in my training this weekend!

In addition to all that walking in the heat, I'm also going to try to get in three runs of 2 miles, 3 miles and 5.5 miles.  I only have two weeks left before the Peachtree Road Race and I'm really getting excited about doing it!

Fundraising this week will be a bit less hands on, with most of my efforts focused on promoting our ongoing Mary Kay fundraiser and following up with other potential donors as well.  Since I'm all about the milestones this week, I would love to get my fundraising totals over $3000 by the end of this week!

Finally, I've got two long blog posts planned that I very much want to write this week and our team will be ordering our team shirts.  Very exciting all around!

Search Amazon.com for Pink Wicking Shirts

My 3 Day Week in Review!

A little bit late this week because we were entertaining some friends from out of town last night.  Onward, to the recap!

Fundraising

Fundraising this week has been all about promoting our team's Mary Kay fundraiser.  A friend of Marcia's and Jen's former French teacher Carol Agate is brokering that sale on behalf of our team and she has graciously offered to donate all of her profits from this sale to our team.  That means that our team will receive a donation equal to half of the proceeds from every sale that we make, rather than the usual 25%!  That fundraiser will be going on through the end of June.  All of the details can be found on the Relentless Optimism team blog here.

In addition to the Mary Kay fundraiser, I am also continuing to see great returns on my fundraising letters!  I received one online donation this week, bringing my total on the 3 Day website to $2401.  I also received three donations in the form of cash or checks totaling $110 which I am redirecting to one of my Relentless Optimism teammates.  As always, I want to recognize my donors this week starting with my friend Dave who recently completed the 124 mile Ride to Conquer Cancer in Canada for which he raised over $3000.  I also got donations this week from my Great Aunt Gerry and Uncle Roger Diamond and from my husband's college buddies Jeff Kostusiak and his wife Christine and Joe Caldwell and his wife Kristen.  Thank you so much everyone!  We could not do this without you!

Training

There is only one way to describe training this week:  hot and sweaty.  Here in Atlanta, the temperatures were hovering in the low 90s all week with humidity that was so high that it felt like there was just moisture hanging in the air.  It made for some very long, steamy training walks and runs!  

All told, I walked 43 miles last week, which is ten miles more than my previous one week high.  On top of that, I also ran 10.8 miles which was also a weekly high.  I even managed to squeeze out my first five mile run and a full two mile run where I didn't stop to walk at all.  I'm clearly not a superstar runner or anything, but I was pretty darn proud of myself.  All told, I have now walked 442.53 miles and run 108.7 miles since I started training.  Good thing I'm pretty heat tolerant with all these miles that I'm racking up!

Extra Stuff

Despite kicking things up a notch in my lab at school, I still managed to get a lot of extra 3 Day things done this week.  First, I posted a link to an interview that I did last week with John of the 60 Miles, 3 Days blog where I discussed some of my favorite 3 Day moments.  You can check that clip out here in case you missed it earlier this week.  I also wrote a post about some of my favorite alternate handbooks about surviving the 3 Day experience which you can find here.

In addition to all that blog action, I also took some time this week to lock down our travel plans for the 3 Day trip up to Boston.  We booked our hotel rooms for Thursday night, bought our plane tickets and decided on our tenting partners this week!  Everything is really coming together now, which is just making me more excited for the weekend to finally get here.  As a part of all that, I posted the address where supporters can send me and my teammates mail that will be delivered on the event.  If you would like to send us some snail mail encouragement during the 3 Day, you can do so at:

3-Day for the Cure PO

Attn: Name of Participant

P.O. Box 8557

Warwick, RI 02888 

Finally, we learned this week that two of our Relentless Optimism team members have recently started new jobs and as a result, will not be walking with us in Boston.  I was really bummed to hear that Maria and Sharon won't be able to take part in the event this year, but I am very proud of them for their exciting new job opportunities.  

Coming Up Next Week...

This week, I'll be focusing on two things on the fundraising front: continuing to promote our Mary Kay fundraiser and sending out another round of fundraising letters, this time to some work associates of my mom's.  In addition, I'm going to try to write one or two blog posts with some more tips about the 3 Day, although I'm still deciding on what topics I want to tackle first.  I am also going to finish locking down our travel plans and our team is going to be figuring out what we want to do for team shirts for the walk, which should be really fun.  Finally, if time allows, I really need to get to the store to pick up my second pair of sneakers so I have time to break them in before the 3 Day!

Even with all that, the thing that I'm looking forward to the very most this week is that it is a RECOVERY WEEK for training!  After last week's 43 miles of walking, I am quite looking forward to *only* walking 27 miles this week.  I kind of wish I could take a week break from running in this intense heat as well, but with the Peachtree Road Race only 3 weeks away, there's no rest for the weary there.  This week, I have 2 mile, 3 mile and 5 mile runs planned along with my 5 mile, 10 mile and two 6 mile walks.  Still, any break in walking is well appreciated at this point in the game! 

Search Amazon.com for Recovery Drinks

My 3 Day Week in Review!

Short and sweet review this week!

Fundraising

I didn't do a whole lot of active fundraising this week, although my fundraising letters are continuing to pay off big time.  I received one donation online which brings my total on the 3 Day website to $2351.  I also received two more checks totaling $300 this week.  As with the checks last week, I will be redistributing those checks to two of my teammates who are still short of their minimums.  I've been able to send out almost $600 to my teammates so far, which is really exciting.  I love being able to help my teammates this way, so thank you everyone for continuing to donate!

In terms of our team fundraisers, we are now officially done with our Tastefully Simple fundraiser.  I still have to post a wrap up over on the Relentless Optimism team blog, but I can officially report that we sold $1470 worth of products and made $200 from the sales.  We also received $225 worth of free products which Jen is going to "buy" for herself and then donate the costs back to our team as well.  That means that our team made a total of $425 which should be posting to the girls' accounts very soon.  

As always, I want to recognize each of my individual donors this week.  So thank you, thank you, thank you to Mark Szajkowski, Tim and Janet Shoemaker (or The Tizzles, as I like to call them!) and the Siegle Foundation who made a very generous donation this week!  

Training

Training over the past week was hot and sweaty!  It was hovering around 90 degrees almost every day last week and with thunderstorms rolling through almost daily, it was incredibly humid as well.  There was just no break in the weather at all.  All told, I walked 33.6 steamy miles last week for a total of 399.53 miles to date.  I am still behind the 24 week recommended schedule by 6 miles, but I made those up this morning so I should be back on track after this next week.  I also ran 10 miles this week for a total of 97.9 miles.  I'm feeling better and better on each run, so that's very exciting.  I'm actually starting to feel pretty confident about running the Peachtree Road Race next month!

Extra Stuff

The biggest thing that I did this week to prepare for the 3 Day was to start organizing all of my teammates' travel plans for the weekend.  I booked our rooms at the official hotel for Thursday night today, so we are definitely all set on that end.  Now we just need to book our rooms for Sunday night and we will be all set!

I also took some time to post my tips about how to go about conducting a successful fundraising campaign via letter writing.  I included my thoughts about what should be in your letters, who to send them to and more.  You can see that post here.  I highly recommend that every walker spend some time sending out fundraising letters.  Since sending out my letters on May 17th, I've gotten $1126 in donations!

Finally, I spent quite a bit of time "pre-writing" a bunch of blog posts that will be posting here over the next couple weeks.  Some of them are long, some not so long, but hopefully all of them will be helpful to someone.  The first of those posts should be up tomorrow!

Coming Up Next Week...

The biggest thing happening next week for fundraising is the start of our newest team fundraiser - a Mary Kay sale!  I will be posting the details of that fundraiser on our team blog later tonight, so be sure to check over there soon if you're interested in buying some Mary Kay goodies to help support our team.

Training next week is also going to be intense.  The 24 week training schedule calls for 41 miles next week (the secondest highest weekly totals for the whole plan!), plus my six make up miles from last week.  On top of that, my 10K training plan calls for 9.5 miles split over 3 runs, with the longest run being 4.5 miles.  Provided the weather cooperates, I should be able to fit it all in.  I'm really looking forward to the recovery week coming up after this though!

Finally, we're heading into the home stretch of 3 Day preparations!  This week I need to book the rest of our hotels for the weekend, reserve a rental car for my husband and buy our plane tickets.  Like I said, lots of preparations still to complete.  My teammates and I are also just about ready to complete online check in which will really make everything official.  I can't wait!

Search Amazon.com for Pink Sleeping Bags

A Very Belated Week in Review

Things have just gone off the rails in terms of my schedule because of the long weekend.  I'm trying to get caught up now, though!

Fundraising

This was a HUGE week for me for fundraising!  My fundraising letters have continued to bring in the donations, both online and in the form of checks via the mail.  All told, I received 9 donations this week totaling $545!  Two of the donations were made online which just squeaked me over the fundraising minimum at $2301.  Success!!  That means that I can now divvy up the remaining checks among my other teammates that still have yet to reach their minimums.  It's great to know that I've reached my minimum and it's even better to be to help out my teammates.

In addition to my personal fundraising, our team also had the last full week of our Tastefully Simple fundraiser that is being run by my teammate Jen.  Jen tells me that we've generated more than $1000 in sales, so we should be seeing a pretty nice donation coming in from that as well.  Finally, I helped my teammate Sharon promote her fundraising event that she held last Friday.  No word yet on how she did, but I'm hopeful that she raised enough to put her over her fundraising minimum as well.

As always, I need to give some recognition to all of my donors this week, especially since this was such a big week for me for fundraising.  This week I received generous donations from my husband's uncle Dave Warfield and his uncle Sam Cincotta and his wife Janice.  I also received donations from a number of Mike's parents' friends, including John and Beverly Poli, Pat and Judy Hayes, Patty Patriarco and Tom and Maureen Harrington.  I also received donations from some old friends and coworkers of my parents, including Dennis Howe and Ron and Patty Irish.  Finally, my mom was really excited to be able to make the online donation that officially put me over the minimum, something that she did for Jen as well.  So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone!

Training

It was a bit hectic to get in all my training this week, but I was able to squeeze in almost all the miles I had planned, both walking and running.  All together, I walked 27.2 miles and I ran an extra 9.8 miles.  That puts my walking miles at 365.93 miles to date and my running miles at 87.9 miles to date.  In order to get everything in this week, I had to double up on running and walking on two different days last week.  For the most part, I was able to handle it physically without a problem.  I will say that my hip was really aching after I finished running on both Thursday and Friday and it was really painful on my post-walk runs.  I don't think this is going to erupt into anything that will keep me from walking the 3 Day, but it's worth keeping an eye on over the next couple weeks.

By far, though, the highlight of my training week was the Reeves Family Training Walk along the Niagara River on Sunday.  I wrote about it in this post, so I won't repeat it all here.  We had beautiful weather throughout the walk and it was wonderful to get a chance to catch up with everyone.  Thanks so much for all your support, Reeves Family!

Extra Stuff

Because of my trip up north, I didn't have a lot of time for extra 3 Day activities this week.  I did take some time to prepare a fundraising letter that our team is going to use to begin approaching some businesses in our home town about sponsoring our team.  I also submitted a press release to our local paper, The Cortland Standard, about writing an article about our team and I'm thrilled to say that it was accepted!  I'll be sure to post a copy of the article here when it comes out so everyone can see it.  I'm really excited about this extra publicity for our team.  Marcia was a huge part of our community back home and I'm hoping that when people who knew her read the article, they will be motivated to learn more about the 3 Day and may even make some more donations!

Coming Up Next Week...

After the big week last week, fundraising is going to be taking a little bit of a backseat this week.  I am optimistic that I'll see some more checks in the mail this week and I'm probably going to contact some of my mom's business associates about donations, but otherwise, I won't be doing much active fundraising. The one thing I will definitely be doing is wrapping up the end of our Tastefully Simple fundraiser that we were running in May and kicking off our Mary Kay fundraiser that we will be running through the month of June.  Look for a post about that over on the Relentless Optimism blog later this week.

Training is going to be really intense this week since I flipped the Week 8 recovery mileage with the Week 9 hardcore mileage last week.  That means that I'm planning two 6 mile training walks during the week and 15 mile and 11 mile training walks over the weekend.  I'm also going to try to fit in three runs this week of 2 mile, 3 mile and 4 mile lengths.  Because this is a short week, that means two days where I'm looking at running and then walking six miles.  Hopefully my hip can handle the pounding and I come out of this week in good shape!

In addition to all that training, this week also all about catching up on my 3 Day blog.  I've been working on a number of longer posts that I'm scheduling to post here over the next two weeks or so.  I know that my lab work is going to pick up next week, so I'm trying to get ahead a little bit.  That way, we can hopefully avoid the dreaded dead blog during the week that I've had lately.  

Finally - the travel info was released for the Boston 3 Day event!  That means it's time to coordinate all of my teammates' travel plans for the weekend, as well as organizing my friends and family that will be in town to support all of us.  I won't be publishing all of the specifics about our travel plans here, but you can expect posts here soon about the specifics for Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

And I think that's all for this past week.  We are definitely in the heart of preparations for the 3 Day now!

Search Amazon.com for Travel Pillows

My 3 Day Week in Review

A little late this week due to the epic Lost finale last night...

Fundraising

As I mentioned in my Week in Review post last Monday, I finally got my fundraising letters in the mail.  The response to those letters (and emails and Facebook mentions...) hasn't been quite what I was hoping for, but it did generate six donations last week totaling $251.  That puts my overall fundraising total at $2051 - only $249 left to go!  

While I am currently focused on just getting to my fundraising minimum, my ultimate goal is actually to raise quite a bit more than that before the Boston 3 Day in July.  However, I have some teammates who need to reach their personal minimums before they can complete online check in.  Since we would like to tent together, that means we only have one month left to get everyone to the $2300 minimum.  That being the case, I am hoping to reach my personal minimum by the end of this week and then shift my focus wholly to getting the other girls to their fundraising minimums.  Once we achieve that, Relentless Optimism will then work together to reach our team goal of $20,000 before the event, something I definitely think we can achieve.  We just have to reach the other milestones along the way, the first of which for me is reaching my minimum.  If you would like to help me reach my goal this week, you can make a donation to the 3 Day here.

Special thanks to my new donors this week:  Hannah Martin (who I mentioned last Monday since she snuck in right before I posted my Week in Review), Brian Ciliax, Marla Gearing, William Perry, Diana Moreland (one of the Mag Moms!), and Chris and Sheila Warne.  Thank you everyone helping me to get that much closer to my goal!

Training

I wasn't the best at training this week, although I somewhat made up for it on Sunday.  For some reason, the mileage I had in my head from the training schedule for this week was totally off, so I ended up quite a bit short on two of my training walks.  I was going to balance things out on Friday during a planned training walk with Julie and Val of the Two Pink Chicks Fo(u)r Boobs team but we had to cancel due to thunderstorms.  I was really bummed about having to cancel because I was really looking forward to showing the ladies around Midtown Atlanta.  To make up for being a slacker walker this week, I decided to really push myself on Sunday and walked 17.5 miles in 4 hours and 24 minutes.  I felt really great during the whole walk, with nary a blister or hot spot in sight.  I wasn't even all that sore, last night or this morning.  Perhaps there is something to this cross training thing after all...

All told, even with my super long walk on Sunday, I only covered 28.7 miles last week, which is 4.3 miles short of the recommended total distance for Week 10.  I will be making those miles up this week though, mostly because I hate feeling behind on things.  Call it "Walker's Guilt" or something.  I have now walked 338.73 miles to date since I started training for the 2010 3 Day event.

I also jumped back into running this week in order to start stretching myself out for the 10K Peachtree Road Race on July 4th.  I ran a total of 8.6 miles and generally felt pretty awesome on all three runs.  I'm still having to walk off and on throughout each run, but I can tell that I'm getting stronger.  That first interval keeps getting longer and I'm recovering from each interval faster, which is exactly the plan.

Extra Stuff

Not too many extra 3 Day activities this week, especially on my blog.  I was able to make it up to the 2 Pink Chicks "Pottery for a Cure" fundraiser on Thursday night which was a lot of fun.  I finally got to meet Julie's teammate Val who was in town for the weekend.  I also got to meet Heidi (who writes the blog A Life Changing Journey) after somehow missing her at the Atlanta Training Kick Off event a couple weeks ago.  It was really great to be able to support other 3 Day walkers in person since my own teammates are scattered all over the East Coast.  I do want to apologize to the girls, though, because I was totally frazzled when I got there (I was running late as usual...) and I don't think I was as friendly as I could have been.  I did have an absolutely great time at the event though and I loved meeting all of you!

Coming Up Next Week...

As I mentioned in the fundraising section above, it is truly crunch time for our team for fundraising.  I am going to be working hard on a number of fronts to really help drum up donations both to get me to my minimum by the end of this week and to raise money for my teammates as well.  Our Tastefully Simple sale is still ongoing, so I will be continuing to promote that hard on Facebook, Twitter and through email.  Another of our teammates, Sharon, has what sounds like an incredible event planned at a club in Florida coming up this Friday that I'm also going to be helping her promote.  On top of that, I'm going to be putting together another fundraising letter that we can use next weekend to start to approach some of the local businesses in our home town about sponsoring us.  So there are lots of irons in the Relentless Optimism fundraising fire this week!

Training is going to be a bit different this week as well because I'm going to be traveling up to New York for a family reunion over Memorial Day weekend.  Because I don't want to spend my entire trip out training, I am going to swap the recommended weekend mileage for Week 9 (this week) with Week 8 (next week) since Week 8 is a recovery week and the mileage is significantly shorter than for Week 9.  That means I will only have one relatively short walk to complete on my trip and three walks during the week.  I am also going to tack a mile or two onto each planned walk to make up those four missed miles from last week.  I am also hoping to squeeze in three runs this week as well, following the recommended mileage for Week 3 from this 10K training plan.  It's going to be an intense week to get all of that in, but sometimes, that's just what it takes.  My awesome family is planning to walk with me on Sunday in New York and I'm really looking forward to showing them just what goes into training for the 3 Day after all these years.  Not all of them will be able to walk the whole distance, so they're planning to each walk a couple of miles with me, relay-style, instead.  I just love that I have that kind of support from my family and I can't wait!

Finally, with only nine weeks left until the Boston 3 Day (!!!!!), I've decided to plot out what I want to cover on my blog in the weeks ahead.  I've got a lot of great things planned and I WILL follow through with them, I promise.  I'm going to start this week with a post all about fundraising letters and I'll move on from there.  I've also got a rather epic sock review coming up, although I still have at least another week of sock testing before I get to that post.  Lots of great content in the weeks ahead as the Boston 3 Day comes ever closer!

My 3 Day Week in Review

Jumping right in this week because I'm running a bit late on my posts...

Fundraising

Our team continued to promote our ongoing fundraiser with Tastefully Simple this week to great success.  Jen, who is our point person for this fundraiser says that we've generated almost $500 worth of sales, which should result in a nice little donation to our team at the end of this month.  If you would like to support us by treating yourself to some Tastefully Simple goodies, you can find all the details about how to do so here.

My other major fundraising effort this week was FINALLY getting all of my fundraising letters.  This is a much more involved process than it sounds, so getting all my letter written, printed and sent out is a huge accomplishment.  All told, I put 51 letters in the mail and sent 98 emails and 142 Facebook messages today.  I am hoping that this effort brings me to my fundraising minimum in the next couple weeks so that I can redirect my energies to helping raise money for my teammates.  I've already gotten one donation as a result of my letters, from my friend Hannah, who also walked in the Atlanta 3 Day in 2008.  Hannah's donation brings my fundraising total to $1836.  Less than $500 to go!

All set up to send out those fundraising letters!

Oh, and the most exciting fundraising thing that happened this week was that my teammate Jen was the first member of our team to reach her fundraising minimum for the 3 Day!  Congrats Jen!

Training

Training for the 3 Day continued to push forward while running took a bit of a backseat now that the Race for the Cure is behind me.  I only ran once this week, covering 2.5 miles, in order to have a bit of "recovery" time.  There was no such break from walking though.  Altogether, I covered 33.3 miles walking this week, for a total of 310 miles walked to date.  I also took part in my second Relay for Life event this past Friday, which you can read about here.

The biggest training challenge this week was the weather.  The forecast called for thunderstorms for four solid days, starting on Saturday and ending on Tuesday - my major window for training.  I thought I could get ahead of the storms by walking 13 miles at the Relay for Life on Friday night.  However, the storms came through early and cut my Relay for Life walk short after just over a mile.  I was pretty frustrated at that point, thinking I was going to have to dodge thunderstorms for the rest of the weekend. In the end, though, the storms stayed away and I was able to walk a solid 8 miles on Saturday out on the hiking trails at Stone Mountain with my most loyal training partner Shenanigans (pictured here on the trail) followed by another 13 miles around town with my husband (and Shenanigans of course!) on Sunday.  In the end, it was definitely a successful weekend of training, even though it didn't start out that way!

Extra Stuff

I didn't do too much extra this week because all of my 3 Day time was spent working on my fundraising letter and mailing list.  My team suffered a bit of a fundraising setback early in the week which really brought my spirits down.  I would discuss it here, but it's still sorting itself out (I hope) and I am hopeful that everything will work out for the best.  As I was reading through the 3 Day blogs this week, I noticed a number of other people were also feeling a bit frustrated with things this week.  That prompted me to write this post, titled "The 3 Day is a Journey, Not a Destination" that got a ton of great feedback and really renewed my spirit as well.

I was also the recipient of a great little surprise this morning from the regional coordinator for the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, Joya.  She had come across my blog and was really touched by my posts about the Walk to Empower and their organization.  To thank me for helping to promote their great event, she sent me a cute little pin for my pack and two Walk to Empower t-shirts, one for me and one for my mom!  I was so excited to receive this awesome gift so thank you Joya!!

Gifts from Joya at the Breast Cancer Network of Strength!

Coming Up Next Week...

Fundraising will continue to be a big focus in the week ahead.  I am hoping that my letters really start to generate some donations.  I will also continue to promote our Tastefully Simple fundraiser leading up to Jen's house party on Friday.  I also have a few other things that I am hoping to start pursuing this week to try to net some big donations for Relentless Optimism.  I am also hoping to attend the Two Pink Chicks' fundraiser on Thursday night at All Fired Up in Alpharetta.  Gotta support my 3 Day sisters!

Training is also going to continue to be intense this week.  The 24 week training plan for the 3 Day calls for 4 and 5 miles during the week and 14 and 10 miles on the weekend.  I don't have any extra events or anything planned for this weekend, so I might try to hook up with an official training walk either at Stone Mountain or up in the 'burbs.  I am also jumping into full on training to run the Peachtree Road Race, a 10K race here in Atlanta on the 4th of July.  I found this great training plan for novice runners (definitely me!) that I think will work well with my walking training.  It's not the most intense plan and it's not designed to train me to win the race or set a world record.  However, it will give me some structure to my running to help me stretch out to 6 miles over the next seven weeks which is really what I'm looking for at this point.

Finally, I'm not even going to speculate on what I'm going to be blogging about over the next week.  I've said I was going to post on a bunch of topics in the past that I've never gotten to, so we'll just see what I'm in the mood to write as the week progresses.  Hopefully something helpful and/or inspirational!

Happy walking everyone!

Search Amazon.com for Body Glide

My 3 Day Week in Review!

Phew!  That was a busy week that culminated in A LOT of walking this weekend!

Fundraising

The primary development on the fundraising front this week was the announcement of our newest fundraiser for Relentless Optimism: Tastefully Simple!  You can read about all the details of that fundraiser over on our team blog in this post.  Briefly, we are hosting an online "party" where everyone can purchase Tastefully Simple products.  My teammate Jen will also be hosting an in house tasting party as part of this fundraiser.  We will be taking orders both online and in person until May 31st.  At the completion of the sale, our team will receive 50% of the seller's profits to put towards our team fundraising goals for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure.  Please check out our sale today and get yourself some yummy treats while helping to support Relentless Optimism!

Beyond starting up the Tastefully Simple sale, I didn't get as much done fundraising-wise as I had planned.  I was mainly hoping to get my fundraising letters out this past week, which didn't happen due to lack of time.  I will be writing those later today, so I am optimistic that I will get some more donations next week.  Because I didn't get any direct donations this week, my fundraising total still stands at $1800.

Training

Training this week happened almost entirely in the span of 48 hours between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.  All of that training this weekend was highlighted by two big breast cancer awareness events: the Atlanta Race for the Cure on Saturday morning and the Breast Cancer Network of Strength Walk to Empower on Sunday morning.  I wrote about each of those events on this blog already, so I won't go into the details about them again here.  Suffice it to say, it was refreshing to integrate these events into my usual 3 Day training and to FINALLY run in my race!  I even had a personal best in the Race for the Cure which was the highlight of my training this week. By the way, that's me feeling sweaty but happy after the Race for the Cure on Saturday in the photo to the right.

Beyond those two events, I also did all of my regular 3 Day walking plus two training runs before the race.  This week, I ended up walking 30.1 miles and running another 9.8 miles.  That puts my mileage to date at 276.73 miles walked and 67 miles run.  I'm getting stronger all every week, although my sore legs this morning are reminding me that it's not a good idea at this point to walk 26.2 miles (the length of a marathon!) AND run a 5K in a single 48 hour period.  We'll save that kind of madness for the 3 Day event, thank you very much.

Extra Stuff

As promised, I got back into the swing of things blog-wise this past week after being relatively quiet for the two weeks before that.  I didn't get to post everything I was hoping to, but I did get to a lot of it, including doing two You're Invited posts about the Race for the Cure and the Walk to Empower.

Most of my blog action this week actually took place over on the Relentless Optimism team blog, since we had a huge week as a team!  First and foremost, we introduced not one but two new teammates this week.  Jen's Uncle Doug decided to join his brother Tommy on the Crew for the Boston 3 Day and we successfully recruited our friend Maria to walk as part of Relentless Optimism after learning that she was planning to walk in Boston by herself.  So our little team has now grown to 6 walkers and 3 crew members!  In addition to adding team members, we also took huge strides in our team fundraising this week.  I posted an update about it here, although those totals are already outdated with the addition of Maria.  We have actually raised $6475 so far, equal to about 32% of our goal.  We still have money coming in from our Flower Power fundraiser and our Amazon Ads as well.  Add to that our new Tastefully Simple fundraiser that we just launched this week and a few other things coming up in the future and I think we are in good shape to make our new team goal of $20,000 by the end of July!

Finally, I spent some time yesterday writing a series of posts about Mother's Day on both our team blog and here on Kristen Walks.  I posted about our Mag Moms over on our team blog in this post and I gave a special shout out to my three teammates that are Moms here on my blog in this post.  Finally, I shared some thoughts about my own mom and how she has truly inspired my involvement in the 3 Day in this post which I would love for everyone to read.

Coming Up Next Week...

The biggest thing that didn't get done last week was getting my fundraising letters out.  That is up next on my to do list today, so that will absolutely be getting done this week.  I am also working on something else on the team fundraising front that I would love to get done this week but until I know for sure that I'm doing it, I'm going to keep the specifics of it quiet.

Training this week will again take me to another cancer awareness event.  I will be participating in my second Relay for Life event in two months on Friday night, this time in Decatur.  I'm hoping to complete  a 13 mile training walk at that event.  Expect posts and pictures about that next weekend.  I will also be sticking to the rest of the 24 week training schedule which calls for 4 and 5 mile walks during the week and 13 and 9 mile walks over the weekend.  Like I said, the 13 mile walk will be at the Relay for Life, but the rest will be out on the sidewalks like usual.  I am also rewarding myself with a day off from running on Tuesday, but with the 10K Peachtree Road Race looming in less than two months, I need to stick with my running as well.  So that will take the form of two 3 mile runs this week (instead of the usual 3 runs) before I start stretching myself out next week.

Finally, I will be posting my recap from the 2007 Atlanta 3 Day event this week along with more advice - based post about socks, similar to this post about sneakers that I posted a while back.  Exciting stuff this week for sure!

My Belated 3 Day Week in Review!

Real life was a bit more intense this week, so my Breast Cancer 3 Day activities were pretty limited.  Nonetheless, a week in review it is!

Fundraising

This week I took some time off and didn't really do anything for fundraising.  My fundraising total did manage to grow some this week and is currently at an even $1800 thanks to two donations.  First, the check I've been going on about from my Relentless Optimism teammate Michelle finally posted to my 3 Day account.  I also received a donation from my colleague Lindsey here at Emory which was a nice surprise.  So thank you very much Michelle and Lindsey for keeping my fundraising moving while I was busy doing other things!

Training

Training this week was interesting to say the least.  We've had storms rolling through the area since last Tuesday, meaning that any attempt to make any plans went out the door. Tuesday was especially crazy. Usually on Tuesdays, I walk three miles then go for a run.  This past Tuesday, I got about a mile and half into my walk only to have the sky open up on me and poor, terrified Shenanigans. Pouring rain, hail, thunder, lightening... you name it.  So we ran to the closest shelter I could find (a public restroom near the pool at Piedmont Park) and hid until the rain stopped.  That's Shenans hiding for dear life during the storm in the picture on the right.  I thought the storm had passed, so we continued on our walk.  Sure enough, not even 1/2 mile later, more crazy rain.  This time we ended up hanging out at Park Tavern until the rain passed.  At that point, I decided our best bet was just to run the rest of the way home and figure out the miles that I covered later on.  However, by the time we got home, it was sunny and beautiful.  Plus, I felt great running, so we just kept going!  In the end, we completed all of the miles I had planned to cover but we ran a much greater percentage of the route than I expected to!   All told, we ran ~ 4.1 miles out of the 5.6 total miles that we did that day, including 2.13 miles at our longest continuous interval.  That's by far the furthest I've ever run without stopping.  So moral of the story: pay attention to the weather forecast before you leave and if you do get caught in the rain, you might get an awesome run out of it.

The rest of the week, I was able to plan well enough to avoid getting caught in the rain but I still had to flip things around to get in all my training walks and runs.  The highlight of my training this week by far was the Atlanta 3 Day Training Kick Off event on Saturday morning.  You can read all about that and see my pictures here.  All together, I walked 23.9 miles this week and ran an additional 10.1 miles for a nice round total of 34 miles covered.  That puts me at 246.6 miles walked to date and 57.2 miles run.  Feeling good!

Extra Stuff

Aack!  I didn't do anything extra related to the 3 Day this week besides attending the Training Kick Off!

Coming Up Next Week

So as you can tell from this update, this past week was very busy for me on the non - 3 Day side of things.  That's going to happen time to time, because my first priority has to be finishing grad school.  Other than not being there for my teammates as I would have liked to be, it's not the end of the world to take a break for a few weeks.  However, when I received my Virtual Personal Trainer on Friday morning and saw that there are only 12 weeks left until the Boston 3 Day, I was shocked!  That's not much time at all and I still have so much to do, especially on the fundraising front.  So this week, despite having an important presentation on Thursday morning, I am recommitting to my 3 Day activities!

While I would love to jump into planning a somewhat larger fundraising event, I think the most important thing for me to do on the fundraising front is to send out my formal fundraising letters.  In the past, I've had an incredible response to a simple letter writing campaign and I expect nothing less this year.  However, people need time to respond to letters.  So this week, I am pledging to have my fundraising letters written, printed and ready to go out by the end of this week.  Once I get that done, I can turn my attention to flashier ways of raising money.  But the letters have to be first.

I'm also going to be kicking things up on the blog this week.  I've got something like 20 posts planned between this blog and our team fundraising blog, so you can expect a lot of new content soon!  I want to talk about some of the fundraising things that my teammates are doing, plus I need to introduce everyone to our new team member.  I am also going to do something I've been meaning to do for a while, which is to share my experiences from my previous 3 Days, starting with 2007.  And of course, I'll be doing something for Mother's Day both here and on the team blog.  So look for those posts this week as well.

Finally, this is one of my biggest and most important weeks for training.  So much so that I'm actually nervous about it.  That's because this Saturday is the Atlanta Race for the Cure!  I've never actually trained to run a race before, so this feels particularly huge and scary even though it's just a 5K.  Somewhere in my brain, I know I can do it.  I'm just nervous is all.  On top of that, the National Breast Cancer Network of Strength Walk to Empower is on Sunday.  I honestly have no idea what to expect at that event, but it should be a great way to mark Mother's Day for me, seeings as I won't actually be with my mom this year.  I'll be posting more about those two events later this week.  And I'll still be doing my regular 3 Day training walks this week, although it's going to take some configuring to make sure my legs aren't tired before the race on Saturday.  But I'll get it done, I know I will.  It just feels like one of those invincible weeks.

Search Amazon.com for Pink Raincoats

My 3 Day Week in Review!

Short and sweet this week!

Fundraising

Fundraising this week was almost entirely focused on our team fundraiser with Flower Power Fundraising. That great fundraiser wrapped up last Friday and ended up bringing in $835 for our team, including over $70 in the last 24 hours.  I had never heard of Flower Power Fundraising before my teammate Melissa found them and I'm so glad that she did!  Such a huge success.  Since Melissa is running that fundraiser for us and she's been out of town, I'm not sure when those donations will post to the 3 Day site, but when they do, that should be about $167 per walker on our team.

Overall, I have raised $1665 so far plus a check that I finally mailed out but that hasn't posted yet.  I also got a donation from my fellow Online Ambassador Cat of the Fat Girl Walkin' blog this week so extra special thank you to Cat!

Training

Despite some thunderstorms on Saturday that messed up my schedule, I was able to complete my four training walks this week for a total of 26.5 miles walked this past week and 222.77 miles walked to date.  

I also completed three runs this week as part of my training for the Atlanta Race for the Cure.  I ended up running a total of 7.9 miles this week and felt much better overall about my progress as a runner than I did last week.  If you recall, I was feeling very frustrated because I was unable to overcome some major mental roadblocks against running more than 10 minutes at a time.  This week, I modified the Couch to 5K plan and did my own intervals intervals instead.  I also switched to listening to podcasts during my runs to keep my mind occupied by something other than "OMG THIS HURTS SO BAD I CANT DO THIS UGH".  With those two changes, I was able to complete three very successful runs this week, often running longer intervals than I had planned because I felt so good.  On Sunday, I ran a 16 minute interval and felt pretty darn good about it.  I'm feeling like my goal of completing the Race for the Cure 5K in under 30 minutes might actually be within reach!

On Sunday, I was joined for both my run and my six mile training walk by my husband Mike.  Mike's pretty athletic, but a runner he is not.  He has walked with me on occasion, but this is the first time he's run with me as well.  We completed our run first and afterwards, while I was huffing and puffing and red faced, he seemed perfectly fine.  GRR - I'm the one that's been training, so I was frustrated that he was able to do the run seemingly so easily.  However, by the time we finished our training walk, he was griping about a sore hip and tired legs while I felt just fine.  In fact, I felt so good that I went to the Inman Park Festival here in Atlanta in the afternoon and walked another couple miles there while he stayed home to recover and make chili for dinner.  This morning, he woke up with incredibly sore legs and I still feel great with no soreness at all.  Clearly, training as hard as I have been definitely pays off in the end!

Extra Stuff

I continued to be really focused on my non 3-Day commitments this week, so I didn't really do much extra beyond training and promoting the Flower Power fundraiser this week.  I did put together a post in honor of Earth Day about Celebrating Earth Day the 3 Day Way.  Heidi of the My Incredible Journey blog told me on Twitter that I convinced her to buy a reusable water bottle, which was great to hear!  Other than that though, things were pretty quiet around here in terms of 3 Day activities.

Coming Up Next Week...

I have a little bit more time this week, so I'm hoping to get a bit more done on 3 Day front than last week, primarily with my training.   

I'm going to continue to stick with the 24 week training walk schedule this week, which calls for 3 mile and 5 mile walks during the week and 11 mile and 5 mile walks on the weekend.  Likewise, I'm planning the following runs for this week, all of which add up to 28 minutes of running per run (compared to 25 minutes last week):

• Run 1: Run 18 minutes, walk 2 minutes, run 10 minutes
• Run 2: Run 20 minutes, walk 2 minutes, run 8 minutes
• Run 3: Run 22 minutes, walk 2 minutes, run 6 minutes

Beyond that, I'm going to start drafting my formal 3 Day fundraising letter and keep working on thank you notes for the donations that I've received so far.  Finally, on Saturday, I'm going to be venturing up to Alpharetta for the Atlanta Training Kick-Off event, which I'm really looking forward to. Should be a fun and hopefully productive week!

Search Amazon.com for Pedometers

My 3 Day Week in Review!

Some good stuff on the fundraising front, some frustrations with training...

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

So I'll still be running 25 minutes in each run but I'll be stretching myself out on each one.  I have no idea if this is what "real" runners do, but I feel much more confident about this plan going forward.  For me that's more than half the battle.

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