Been gone for awhile

AmyLEnsor · #1 01-12-2002, 08:33 PM

Well, not gone really, but having a hard time keeping up with everything. I've been wearing my pedometer, though!

My marathon training is almost to an end--less than a month away. Hard to believe!!! I walked 16 miles today, 15 last week. The fifteen last week was a 3 mile jump from my last long walk, and I found it very difficult. The 16 mile walk today didn't seem so bad! Now that I've been home for a few hours, I almost feel like I haven't done much at all today. Today's 16 is actually the longest training walk I'll do, supposedly. Next week is down to 14 and the week after that is 10, then the marathon.

I've been journaling and trying to stay within my Weight Watchers points. Last Thursday I decided to try the step aerobic class at my gym again. The instructor scared me the first time and he was just as scary this time (he is sarcastic and bitchy), but I was a little better at it since I used a low step and put it right up front where I could see him. I may wait until after the marathon to take more step classes though. Part of me is afraid that with my coordination, I'll fall of the step and break an ankle. Kathy Smith is easier to follow

Hope everyone has been doing well.

**pluckyduck** · #2 01-12-2002, 08:52 PM

Well, hey, girlfriend!

:footsteps

I was hoping you'd show up and give us brand new long distance In Training folks some of your wisdom.

16 miles!!!

Go you!

How long did it take you to work up to that? You've been at this for months, yes?

Andrea
remedial, but In Training

AmyLEnsor · #3 01-12-2002, 09:10 PM

Shoot, I think I threw out my old calendars. My training schedule is pretty much big walk on Saturday, short to medium sized walk on Sunday, rest and stretch Monday, walk an hour each day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, rest and stretch on Friday. I do the Saturday walk, and then kind of do my own thing the rest of the week. I only recently began actually resting on the rest days.

Basically we just build up in 2 mile increments. The first time you do 2 miles it seems little hard, the next week it feels like a breeze.

A lot of the women in the Team in Training program have done the Avon 3 day. Some of them said they immediately signed up to do it again, others said once was enough, thank you. The Avon 3-day they did this past October was the one that goes from Santa Barbara to Malibu. I can't speak for what they are like anywhere else, but the one woman's complaint seemed to be mostly that the experience was different since the roads are not blocked off: there is a lot of single file walking in places, and traffic and crosswalks. She also didn't like the camping out for the 2 nights. I guess she has just been spoiled by the marathon experience where you take over the road, walk in groups, have people cheering you on and supplying you with water and stuff like that.

I have discovered that with the Las Vegas Marathon, the roads will be opened back up after 5 hours. I doubt any of the walkers in my group will be done by then. The sad part is it starts out in the middle of nowhere and ends up in the city, so I will be ending with the full Vegas traffic. Too bad!

AmyLEnsor · #4 01-12-2002, 09:13 PM

Oh, here is the link to my online training diary: http://65.184.151.233/~tnt/training.html

Ignore the ugly green color of the page--it looks much gentler on a Mac than on Windows, I just found out, since I am using a Win machine right now. I will get rid of that color when I next update my page.

But you can kind of get an idea of what my training has been like.

cyndilouwhoo · #5 01-12-2002, 09:28 PM

Welcome back Amy! We missed you. Lots has happened while you have been busy training. I am going to be taking a look in your diary for pointers.

Glad you are here to critique our techniques~

Cyndi

**lynnzop**[$] · #6 01-12-2002, 09:30 PM

Amy, glad to see you back!

Wow...16 miles...I'll be going out to take a look at your diary.

I'll REALLY be curious to hear how you feel after the marathon. It should be a great experience!

Lynn

**taurusmoon** · #7 01-12-2002, 09:53 PM

Hi Amy. Missed ya around here although I can see you've been rather busy. :thumbs:

Come visit us more often, okay?

Sara

**pluckyduck** · #8 01-13-2002, 08:01 AM

By the way, by reading through your stuff, it looks to me like you are coming awfully close to your fundraising deadlines....

How is that going for you?

I'm wishing now that we'd offered you more support when this whole thing first came up. (Now that I understand what it feels like on the other side.

)

Tell us what's going on.

Andrea

quasar · #9 01-13-2002, 10:37 AM

Wow 16 miles! That's awesome.

Welcome back!

Janice

AmyLEnsor · #10 01-14-2002, 01:10 AM

Well, since you asked about fundraising, Andrea...

It has been harder than I thought it would be. I was supposed to send letters to everyone I know, including doctors, hairdressers, cleaners, that sort of thing. I sent the letters with stamped addressed envelopes. The first wave went to my neighbors since there is a little girl in the neighborhood with leukemia and I thought I would raise a lot this way. My rationale was that I pretty much give $10 to all the charity people who come to the door, or I buy gift wrap/cookies/magazines. It just so happened that the day my letters went out, I got a letter from someone in the neighborhood who was doing a neighborhood fundraiser for the exact same charity--Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She organized it because of the little girl in our neighborhood. Bad timing for me, though.

Some of the people in the neighborhood who know me have said they plan to donate, but time is getting so close that I don't think they will.

I was kind of haphazard in my letter campaign and didn't get out as many as I had planned. I ended up sending out e-mail to some of my family members and actually got some donations that way. My aunt who has leukemia sent me $100. My husband's family has been generous, and if his youngest brother comes through with his pledge, I will be doing well.

At the fundraising meeting, one woman who has done this for about 10 marathons now has said that you will really be surprised at how it works out. People you thought would give will not, and people you didn't think would give will. I have seen some of that.

Now just this past Friday, I sent e-mail out to 5 of my college friends that I still keep in contact with. One of them is more a friend of a friend and I don't know her that well, but she wrote back immediately to ask for my address so she can send me a check. I was really surprised and grateful. I had meant to send my friends real letters, but I guess I just let time go by. So I thought to myself, what the heck, let them know you are doing a marathon and see if they will give a pledge. It's not like I'm trying to give them bubonic plague or something.

All of the people that I've talked to have met their goal already. Depending on how far I am from it, I was thinking of going door to door in my neighborhood a few streets down where no one knows me. In the end, I just have to pay what I don't raise on my credit card, so that is probably less painful than door to door solicitation.

When I was in college, I was able to raise $3000 to go on a mission trip with Campus Crusade for Christ. I thought surely this would be easier, especially since Leukemia & Lymphoma Society sounds better as a charitable organization.

I think the problem is that I don't work, and it isn't possible for me to ask at my husband's work.

**pluckyduck** · #11 01-14-2002, 07:56 AM

Amy - In my PM to you, I mentioned this, but I'll repeat myself a bit here if you don't mind... they haven't set the fundraising up to be friendly to people with online friends, have they?

And that's a shame for you.

I PMd Amy that I'd like to make a donation (feeling rather guilty that it hadn't occurred to me earlier

)

Basically, our only choices are snail mail checks or PayPal cash directly to Amy. For most of the world

, I guess that isn't a big deal, but for online addicts like myself, it seems positively Stone Age, doesn't it?

I was going to give Amy crap for not making a web page where it was easier for people to give and having gently probed her friends here for donations earlier, but, I can see why she didn't.

Oh well, I don't need to be shy since its not my walk. If you wanna help Amy out a little bit, PM her, okay. Especially if you have a little cash sitting in your PayPal account that doesn't have a home.

The cause, again, is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

We do a walk and fundraiser every year at work to support the organization because we have person connections to a gentleman who in an other decade would have been felled by Leukemia a long time ago. Thanks to research (which only comes from money), he's been living a full, happy, and productive life, going on six years from his diagnosis.

Andrea
looking for the check book....

**taurusmoon** · #12 01-14-2002, 08:09 AM

Okay, so how did I miss the fact that this marathon was a fundraiser?

Oh Amy....

Sara
Not exactly all there

jenninca · #13 01-14-2002, 08:16 AM

Oh good grief, I didn't realize it was a fundraiser either!

Cindy

AmyLEnsor · #14 01-15-2002, 03:02 AM

Oops, of course I just realized that my last post was probably pretty self serving since I was whining about fundraising.

Well, I did create a website of sorts using a text editor, but I know next to no html so it is very rudimentary and not all that interesting. I think I have a Paypal link on there, but if not the address I use to log in there is AmyLEnsor@aol.com. For my online friends, I just mentioned what I was doing and included a link to my website and figured people could donate if they were so moved.

My plan was to have a little graph to update my fundraising totals, but I couldn't create one I liked in Photoshop so I just gave up.

I think the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is particulary up to date with their donation system. Heck, I wish I could log in and see how much money I've raised because I haven't gotten a tally from them in awhile and I'm not quite sure. I think I've turned in about $730 so far and I have a $25 check sitting here. I'm supposed to make copies of all the paperwork I send out, but with one batch I just wrote everything down, then I lost the paper. Sheesh!

Tomorrow I have a meeting where I go and pick up all my paperwork, so I'll find out then, I guess.

Thanks everyone!