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Had a really nice week of training. I may try to follow this pattern a bit more regularly through August: shorter mid-week runs on Monday and Wednesday (with the team), cross-training spin classes on Tuesday and Friday, and a long team run on the weekend. That's still five days a week, like I did this past week, when I felt like my Saturday run was as good a long run as I've had so far.

Part of that might have been the course: heading out and back on the Luce Line trail. It's a fairly flat route. I spent much of the time running with Sanjiv. A couple of hours of good conversation, and a decent pace on the back seven miles.

Saturday's Run: 14 miles in 2:37:00, including water stops.
Weekly Total: 24 miles in three runs (4, 6, 14), and another two days of cross-training spinning fun.
Total Mileage: 206 miles.
Fundraising Total: $11,806.30 (including $309.80 from the Silpada fundraiser that will be posted later)

So I think I've adjusted to a "new normal" sense of what a light week of exercise looks like. I decided that I wanted to do a little less this week than what I've grown accustomed to over the past several weeks. And really that means that I still wanted to go for my Monday run: considered stopping after two miles of a loop around Bredesen Park, but figured I should just go the full four miles as prescribed by my training schedule.

It also means that I wanted to go to spin class over lunch on Tuesday. I really love those days - especially into the afternoon and evening, I feel very clean, very healthy.

And, of course, I can't miss my Wednesday team runs if at all possible. It was hills this week, 6-8 repeats up and down the quarter mile at Lock & Dam #1. I wanted to hit all eight. And I really wanted the last four to be stronger than the first. Which they were. Which was awesome.

So, today, finally, is a nice day of rest. Tomorrow will be spinning, again, for that great end-of-the-week calorie burn, followed by fourteen miles with the team on Saturday.

Two days of rest? Yeah. That's a nice, easy week.

Love it.

Monday: 4 miles in about 37 minutes.
Wednesday: 6 miles in about an hour.
Total Mileage: 192 miles.

Wow. Nine weeks into the training already. Looks like another twelve weeks of training (and tapering) before the Twin Cities Marathon, and still going strong. Although I'd honestly say that this past week of short and long runs haven't felt all that great. Nothing terrible -- just kind of blah.

Yesterday we ran just a hair over thirteen miles, leaving from the Run 'N' Fun in St. Paul, winding our way up to Summit Avenue, and then down the river road and back. Nice to be along part of the actual marathon course. Again, though, as with much of this week, hot and humid were the story of the day.

Looking back, I realized that because of last Sunday's long team run, I ended up with seven consecutive days of running or cross-training this week. That probably plays a part in my generally higher levels of fatigue: four mile runs on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; 45 minutes of spin class on Tuesday and Friday; book-end long runs of 12 and 13 miles last Sunday and yesterday. Lots of exercise and lots of mileage before a well-earned day of rest today.

On fundraising: there are some checks that I'd sent in earlier this week that haven't cleared yet which will bring my weekly total to about $675, and my overall total to $11,196.50.

Saturday's Run: 13 miles in 2:30:00 (including water stops)
Weekly Total: 25 miles in four runs, plus spin classes on Tue/Fri for cross-training.
Total Mileage: 182 miles.
Fundraising Total: $11,196.50.

What a difference a day makes. Or maybe it was running outside, in the summer sun, instead of indoors on a treadmill. Still haven't figured out why some runs are better than others, but these back-to-back four mile runs were most decidedly not the same.

And even still, tonight's run wasn't great, or solid, or awesome. But it was much better than yesterday. Two miles out and two miles back along paved and gravel trails. I was hoping that the ferocious headwind I'd faced on the way out would mean a nice tail wind on the way back, but no such luck. I think it was just swirling.

Good, not great, and at this point, mid-summer, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Today's mileage: 4 miles in 00:37:45.
Total mileage: 169 miles.

The heat chased me inside this evening -- dangerously high temps and humidity didn't seem like a good time to be out and about. So I took my workout indoors to a treadmill at the St. Louis Park Lifetime Fitness. Might as well have run outside with how much I was sweating by the time I finished. Really felt like a mediocre run at best. Just couldn't get into it.

But I'll take my small victories, too: getting close to three miles, I was prepared to pack it in. Was already mentally thinking of good excuses to stop. It was hot. I was tired. I don't know what else, but they would have been really awesome reasons.

Instead of turning off the treadmill after three miles, I managed to convince myself to forge ahead to four. Didn't take too much extra effort or time in the grand scheme of things.

And, more importantly, I made sure to keep going even when I wanted to stop.

That's a very good thing.

Today's mileage: 4 miles in 38:40.
Total mileage: 165 miles.

Last night we hosted a Silpada jewelry party at our house to help with fundraising. Melissa set it all up and coordinated everything -- I just made sure to show up and offer beverages to everyone who came. Marcy, the Siplada representative, was a Team in Training alumni in 1997 and has been giving 20% of total jewelry sales for events like these to TNT.

There was a pretty good turnout, a nice blend of family, dance friends, and even a good contingent from Carleton -- including Heidi, Jen Ryan, and a surprise guest appearance by Avery (Duffy) Scheib. Lots of great jewelry on display!

The good news is that Marcy is keeping this party "open" for the next couple of days. If anybody would like to take a look at some nice silver jewelry between now and Friday, July 16th, you can look at the catalog on Marcy's website: http://mysilpada.com/marcy.sackett. To order, simply send an e-mail to marcy dot sacket at gmail dot com. Please let her know that this purchase should apply towards the party hosted by Melissa Albay on 07/13 for my TNT fundraising efforts. Marcy will help total everything and sort out taxes and shipping and handling. Orders are shipped directly to your house.

Even though the calendar suggested a rest day, I wanted to get out for a few miles. This is turning into something of a Monday ritual: out and back along a paved trail near the Depot in St. Louis Park, before it turns into gravel for a mile or more. Not sure the exact street, but there's a nice turnaround point that makes pretty near four miles after a good stretch of gravel trail.

Forgot my iPod in the office, as well as my Garmin. So it was no shirt, no watch, no music, and no shoes. Well, you know. Ran with the Five Fingers, but close enough.

It was really, really nice. Quiet. Able to really listen to my feet padding along, focusing on the run itself, instead of an awesome mix of summer music. Not that i'd want to always want to run like that, but it was pretty liberating, especially running without a watch.

A beautiful, warm, evening run.

Today's mileage:: 4 miles.
Total mileage: 161 miles.

A very good week, on multiple fronts. Since Monday, a little more than $2,800 in new donations (from 20 different donors) have come through. So awesome! I continue to be so very happy about this early fundraising progress -- only problem, now, is that I'm falling behind on my thank you notes. No worries, though. I'm slowly but surely catching up.

Had a great time at Mik's "Kegs for a Kure" fundraising party last night. Earlier this month, his wife, Heidi, celebrated her fifth anniversary in remission from AML. She was diagnosed when she was twenty-three years old. We talked about some of the shared surprises in that initial first diagnosis, and how everything in life just goes on hold for a little while. The naivety of youth, too, both ourselves and our friends, almost blissfully unaware of how seriously ill we really were.

Our long team run today was twelve miles along the Minnetonka Trail. This is the second time we've run this out-and-back. It was a great feeling, hitting the second water stop at four miles, realizing that was our turn around point the last time we'd run it. I know this will keep happening throughout the summer: the longest runs that were sometimes a struggle in June and July will be a distant memory come August and September.

Finally, I signed up for a couple of races later this month and during the first weekend of August. Would like a little practice with race day activities before the marathons, and these seemed like nice options: 5 for the Y, a 5k in Edina supporting the local YMCA, and the Minnesota Half Marathon; a hilly 13.1 mile run along Shepard Road in St. Paul. Should be fun!

Today's Mileage: 12 miles in 2:17:00 (including water stops)
Weekly Total: 25 miles in four runs, plus Tue/Fri spin class for cross-training.
Total Mileage: 157 miles.
Fundraising Total: $10,521.50.

Continuing to find a way to push through limits, self-imposed or otherwise, pleasantly surprised at what this 41-year-old body is able to do. Today was my familiar double loop through Bredesen Park. Decided to go minimal in the evening sun: shorts, iPod, and my Five Fingers. Left a bottle of Gatorade at my car so I could get some fluid at two miles, after the first loop.

I felt strong. Felt like I was moving along at a pretty good clip. When I stopped my watch at my Gatorade stop, it had taken me 18:20 to run the two mile loop. I knew that was about as fast a mile time as any of my runs so far this spring and summer. So for my second loop, I decided to push it a little faster.

Still felt strong. Definitely wasn't the calm and easy breathing I'm used to, but I was in control. Didn't check my watch until I'd stopped at my car again: 35:30 total for the four miles.

That last loop around the park, my last two miles? Yikes. 17:10, or 8:35/mile. That's better than 30 seconds per mile faster than my previous best pace just last month.

I don't even know when I ran last a sub-nine mile, let alone felt comfortable getting down around to close to eight-and-a-half. Easily ten years ago, if not longer. There's plenty of room left for me to push it even faster as the summer progresses. Hope to see some seven-something times by August or September.

Today's mileage: 4 miles in 35:30 (8:52/mile).
Total mileage: 145 miles.

Absolutely hate it. I read this update on Siona's website earlier today:

After waiting for over 2 days we got the phone call around 5.00 this evening and the news we were waiting for finally came and unfortunately it wasn't the # we were looking for. The abnormal cell count is still 13% which means we were stable throughout but not enough to get Siona into remission. Siona is such a brave girl and visually has done great, which to us makes this journey more bearable. We will meet with the doctors on Friday and then decide where we go from here. We are obviously disappointed, but when you look at Siona and see her smiles and energy we know we will continue to keep trying to get her into remission and go for transplant as the goal.

July 7th, 2010

What a great day! Earlier this afternoon -- only two days after I'd sent out an update on my training and fundraising progress -- several additional donations came through to kick my total over $10,000. Feels great to hit that early milestone. I'm really looking forward to additional fundraising efforts over the next four months.

Training today was another track workout at Minnehaha Academy. Had a good conversation with Stephanie again -- we were paired up for the relay/pace activity, which really meant that we didn't end up running together at all. Go figure. For the laps around the track I ran with Crystal and Tanya. We decided that our paces are pretty similar, so I'll at least have somebody to run with at both marathons.

Today's mileage: about 5 miles, in 50 some minutes.
Total mileage: 141 miles.

Simple out and back over lunch today -- hot, again, muggy, again, as if this somehow surprises me in early July. Legs have been a little more sore today than usual. Time for a nice hot bath, I think, before bedtime.

Today's mileage: 4 miles in 00:38:40 (9:40/mile).
Total mileage: 136 miles.

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well."

- Teddy Roosevelt

With the start of a new month, it feels like a good time to provide a more detailed recap of my training and fundraising progress to date. Even though I'd been doing a little bit of running, here and there, from mid-March to mid-May, I look at the first team training run on May 15th as the "official" start of my training for the Twin Cities and Dublin marathons.

That was seven weeks ago. I've run either three or four days a week, every week, including long weekend runs of 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 12, 8, and 10 miles. Grand total for my training runs, so far, is just over 130 miles. Cross-training has been mostly spin classes, sometimes just an exercise bike, consistently every Tuesday and Friday for each of the past seven weeks.

Combined, then, I've trained on 41 out of 51 days through the Fourth of July. Never less than five days per week.

As great as I've felt about the training -- and it has, truly, consisted of many more good days than bad -- I'm even happier about my preliminary fundraising results. Including a few checks that still need to be processed, approximately $7,700 in donations have been made by almost sixty different donors. That total already exceeds the amount I'd needed to raise simply to participate in both marathons this October! And there are still four full months left until Dublin. I hope to be able to continue to generate interest and publicity through the summer and fall to reach my personal goal of $40,000 of donations to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Woke up this morning to a good amount of rain. Checked the radar and saw that it would be moving through the cities pretty quickly, so I had a quick breakfast, a little coffee, and drove over to the south end of Lake Harriet to start my run. Not far into my run, it really started to pour. Made me laugh. Actually, on the quiet, mostly empty paths around the lake, it made me open up my arms and smile. Why not? It was warm. I was drenched, but knew I'd be that way regardless by the end of my run. And it felt great to be out and about early on a Sunday morning, weaving my way along Harriet, then up to Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles before working my way back down again, tackling this weekend long run on my own.

Today's mileage: 10 miles in 01:46:30 (about 10:40/mile)
Total mileage: 132 miles.

Weekend long runs are slowly getting longer, but everything during the week is a nice, manageable 3-4 miles.

Because of the holiday weekend, we didn't have a formal long run planned for the team this Saturday. Instead, a good group of teammates I've been running with quite a bit so far agreed to meet up at Lake Harriet at 7 in the morning. The past few nights have not been the best for me in terms of sleep, unfortunately, and even with turning in early last night I slept through my alarm. Well. I remember turning it off and going back to sleep "just for a minute or two."

Yeah. So that didn't work out so well. It was well past 7:30 before I regained consciousness again, and nearly 8:30 before I rolled out of bed.

This is what happens sometimes, I suppose. Need to pay attention when my body is asking for rest. It's turned out to be a crazy hot day. Tomorrow should be cooler, with chances of thunderstorms. I will take my chances, then, tomorrow morning, hammering out those ten miles solo.

A fairly quiet week of training so far: scheduled day of rest on Monday. Spin class over lunch on Tuesday. Team run of four-miles on Wednesday consisted of "speed games," or "Fartlek" as it's known in running circles. A nice, strong four-mile run on Thursday. Second day of cross-training on Friday with another (relatively empty) spin class.

Not long after I'd started running again -- I mean really running, consistently, several times per week regardless of the weather or how I felt -- I'd learned that one of my high school classmates has a daughter with leukemia. Nigam and I had lost touch after graduation, as is often the case, especially when you leave the state to go to college. We exchanged phone numbers, and had a great talk about his six-year-old daughter, Siona, and the challenges she's been facing.

She was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia almost exactly two years ago. She went into remission, but not after enduring months (years) of chemo and radiation. Earlier this spring, unfortunately, she relapsed. Her leukemia returned. Treatment at this point is a little more difficult (as if it isn't already difficult enough, at four, five, six, to deal with "the stupidity of cancer"). She's continuing to receive more chemo to drive down the percentage of leukemic cells in her bone marrow -- to get her back into remission -- before receiving a cord blood transplant.

As much as I like the fall season's honored patient -- and I sincerely believe that 21-year-old Robert continues to somehow draw strength from 41-year-old Robert to get through these seven or eight months -- I'd asked Nigam if I could also run in honor of Siona. Her fight is much more urgent.

There are a lot more details about Siona here: www.sionashah.com. Please keep her in your thoughts, too, as I continue to prepare for my two marathons.

Didn't rain after all this morning, although it might as well have been given how completely soaked my shirt was by the end of the run. Lots of humidity, even at eight in the morning.

Had a really good long team run, hills and all, with more opportunity to get to know some of the other runners a little better. After striking up a conversation with Corey -- this is one of the keys to doing the longer runs, by the way, is finding and maintaining a pace where you can carry on a conversation -- I learned that he, too, is a leukemia survivor.

The stories, they keep coming.

He had ALL when he was five, and went into remission. Shortly after his tenth anniversary in remission, following an annual check-up, he learned that he'd relapsed. A bone marrow transplant from his brother ensued. That was twelve years ago. We shared war stories a bit, and both of us are blessed to have avoided any kind of long-term health issues that might have originated with high doses of chemo or radiation when we were younger.

This is why I'm running: because I can.

Today's run: 8.3 miles in 1:35:30 (with water stops)
Weekly total: 23 miles in five runs, plus Tue/Fri spin class for cross-training.
Total mileage: 114 miles.
Fundraising total: the progress bar shows $5,164.50, but I'd mailed in several checks to the Leukemia Society earlier in the week, so my actual numbers should be somewhere around $5,500.