Fundraising Update #1

It's the last day of February-- which means we've been fundraising for a month-- and we have $705.00 out of the $5,800.00 that we need to run (that's 12%).
Here we are writing the fundraising letters on a snow day! John Reitz, Scott Vicari, Kristin Elliott, Jaki Bradley, David Greenslade: thanks for your help. Takes a village to put all those stamps on.

Thank you to everyone who has donated money so far. It means a lot to us to see our little goal bars on our fundraising websites fill up. The training and fundraising are all so gradual--a little soreness here, an ankle acting weird there, the joy of a really fast split, a pang of worry here (will we ever raise enough?), then, inevitably, that rush of gratitude and relief when a check comes for the LLS in the mail. So many feelings!
We send love and lactic acid (we've got a lot of both to give away)!

Week 5 and a Mission Moment

Hey friends! We're well into week 5. Yesterday was my last mid-week 2-mile and I ran it in 15:24. Holllllaaa. That's fast for me. That's peanuts for Em, but oh well. Last Saturday we had group training and ran 5 miles on the American Tobacco Trail in Durham. Emily. about 6:45 AM. About 30 degrees. Sometimes that part is harrrrddd, y'all.

It was pretty cold but SUNNY and nice. We took it easy--10 minute splits--but did okay.
We finished sending out our letters, too. Hollie Novak (who teaches ceramics at Chapel Hill High, my beloved alma mater) ran into us at the Starbucks after the run and stuffed with us! Such a sweetheart. It's crazy: all of the people with Team in Training are united by this very warm spirit of giving, so it's hard to run into anyone (no pun intended) who won't lend a hand or give you a big smile or do something really enthusiastic and encouraging. We're already really excited about making new friends.

Em and Hollie. TWO HUNDRED LETTERS! STUFFED! SEALED! In da MAIL!

In one of our team emails this week, we heard about one of the reasons we're running:
"Teammate Al Colvin wanted to share his personal mission moment with the team this week. Al is training in honor of his little pal: Hunter Zen Thawley, an adorable little person struggling with leukemia. As of this week, Hunter is out of options. His cancer has returned for the fourth time, and after 9 rounds of chemo and a bone marrow transplant, there is nothing left to do to save his life.

Here is a message from Hunter’s mom 's blog :

'We are continuing to love on Hunter like never before. We are drowning him in kisses and holding him and squeezing him tight every single second we get. I tickle and smooch his tiny, little toes constantly. I look him deep into his eyes and make sure that he understands when I tell him that mom and dad love him so deeply and that we will ALWAYS be with him, loving him, cherishing him and applauding his amazing and courageous efforts.....wherever he is. We try to get him to smile as many times as we possibly can and are constantly figuring out ways to make his time left the most enjoyable and the most memorable......for all of us.'"

Hey Hunter. You're in our hearts.

Thanks, Kinko's!

We don't want to get anybody in trouble, but last night we were at FedEx Kinko's printing fundraising letters to send to friends and family and things we VERY BELABOURED because we kept forgetting this and that. Then the photo printer broke halfway through our job so a very, very gracious employee said "you know what? This is for a good cause. No charge." Thanks, Kinko's. You've got a big heart. LETTERS and PICTURES coming your way, friends!

We begin!

Comrades!
It's hard to believe, but we're in the thick of week 3 (though I think we could probably start every entry on this blog with "it's hard to believe"; this whole process is unbelievable). Despite the rough start of 7" of snow whiting out our first group training session on January 30th, we have run 9 very fun miles together on Team in Training's watch (though there was that very, very slow 2-miler in mid-January where we discussed how awesome TNT was gonna be when we started and how we needed to invest in, like, actual gloves to keep our actual hands actually warm-- in the words of our friend Kristin, "no doi").
We had our first team run on Saturday. We ran 3 hilly miles in Meadowmont at 7:30AM in 35 degrees and it was AWESOME. Even better, we're already shaving minutes off of our two-milers. I think it's safe to say we both have very, very sore glutes (Emily's "butt is shrinking").
In real news, this week we begin fundraising! We will be kickin' cancer by check and by paypal to start, with more adventurous ways to contribute to the LLS to come soon.
Elizabeth's fundraising webpage is located here (http://pages.teamintraining.org/nce/rnr10/elizphil). So go visit!
Perhaps some bios forthcoming? Sure hope so.