Long weekend update...

Long weekend means long update, so be prepared for lots of reading...

First I'd like to thank all the generous people that keep donating to my Team in Training/Leukemia & Lymphoma Society fund raising account. I couldn't be happier as I'm already past the half-mark!
This is really starting to get downhill, and it's all thanks to YOU!

Now let's go back to the updates.

First, I made my personal best for a mile (on the boot-camp trail loop). I know this is nowhere near where I need to be to qualify for Boston, but it seems that I'm getting closer and closer every week. For me being able to get less than 7min/mile is a big deal. If I can run 1/4 of the marathon at this pace, and 1/2 at the needed 7:30/mile pace, then I can "slack-off" the last 1/4 of the marathon, at about 8min/mile...
Now can I push that for 6 miles? Can I run at 6:30/mile? One thing for sure - I need to keep running and training - my TNT starts with a kick-off meeting next Saturday!


Anyway... enough about running - I took really lazy weekend, and aside from painting bedroom in our house, I did two nice bike rides.
Sunday Deb, Omar, Justyna and I, went to the Los Gatos Creek trail, and we cycled from Campbell to Los Gatos, and back (roughly 11 miles). The GPS data for this ride is a bit off, cause being in a group I've got distracted, and forgot to turn on the GPS on the way out for probably about 1/2 mile. On the way back, there's a "bonus" data from a quick ride to the ATM on Pruneyard, since I forgot to turn the GPS off at the end of the trail.


Finally today we did a little bit more demanding ride (one nice long uphill, but not too steep, and one quick steep uphill) in the Woodside area. It was again Deb, Omar, Justyna and I. We all started in the back on Bicycle Outfitter in Los Altos, and went over a small (about 20 miles) loop around the area. Again, being distracted by talking with the group, I forgot for almost 1/2 mile to turn the GPS on. Also on the way back we stopped at Pete's Coffee, and the data have about 1 hour less of moving time, than the total for our ride :-)

It's downhill from here...

Both running and fund-raising is all about making progress, and the last week seems that I made a great progress in both.
Thanks to a great response from both my co-workers, friends and even people that I never met, I'm already getting close to half of my fund-raising goal. I keep telling myself that it will be "downhill from there". I'm hoping that once I cross the half-way mark, it will only be easier to count marks towards the finish line. So far I'm really happy with 46% mark:
Running was pretty good too. First I ended week with a great boot-camp workout, that I topped off with a mile run (7:29/mile). Then we went with our friends for a short and easy bike ride, but they were taking off for Sacramento later on that day, so the short easy ride had to do it. Finally I went today to the track for my long run of the week. This time I challenged myself to run 6miles. I ended up running 10K (6.2miles) at average 9:00/mile pace. This was first time running at the Bud Winters Field with my Forerunner 301. It was great to have something keep the tabs on mileage automatically, cause last time when I run there I was getting lost with how many laps I finished, and how many more to go. The other advantage of using GPS is that you get much more precise mileage readouts, than just by counting laps. The complete data for the workout are as usually on tprzyg.motionbased.com site.
It's great to know that even now I could run the Wharf-to-Wharf in less than an hour, but I'm hoping that by the race day (July 22) I'll be able to run better and faster.
BTW: I'll start the regular training for my marathon run with TNT in June, that means I'll have roughly 4 months. As with everything - there's always a lot of room for improvement, so I'll have to keep on training!

Minor setback...

Last week I've got some really nasty sinus infection, so I wasn't running, I wasn't biking, I wasn't even able to come to the boot-camp. This week I'm catching up, but it's tough to get back on track. I hope to make up for that over the weekend with a good run and some biking.

BTW: I'm about 1/3 in my fund raising for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. This is mostly thanks to a few (anonymous) donors that made it so much easier for me to start. To all you potential donors - there's still a lot more (about 2/3) to be done, so please keep on giving. This is all for a really great cause, and as I said before - I'm not asking for much, as every dollar counts. I know that it sounds unrealistic, but honestly every dollar CAN make a difference, not only in my fund raising, but more importantly in the cancer research.

Donate early... donate often...

TNT already activated my part of their website for collecting pleadges and donations towards my fund-raising goal. Please go there and remember that every donation counts, and every amount can possibly save someone's life!

http://www.active.com/donate/tntsvmb/tntsvmbTPrzygo

Thank you all for supporting me in this journey!

P.S. Remember - you can support me by clicking on the ads here, as all the proceeds will go towards my fund raising goals with TNT.

To rename or not to rename?

Big news is that over the weekend I joined Team in Training, to get closer to my goal of running the Boston Marathon. This of course spurs a question about the blog title. Not that I ever mentioned why I picked originally the name "Running with a yellow rubber band", so here's the story. Long time ago, at work, we received a box of the "Live strong" wristbands from Lance Armstrong's foundation. I never wore it, since I never believed I deserve to wear it - yes you guessed it right - I used to be a couch potato. Since I almost completely turned my life around (I work out, run and bike). I decided that for once I'm good enough to wear the "yellow rubber band". Now TNT has their own purple wristband. I was torn trying to decide what to do, when it occurred to me that I should wear them both, and have "Yahoo!" colors on my wrist.
Yes - Yahoo!s original colors were purple-and-yellow. The legend has it, that when Yahoo moved into their first office building, Filo went to a store to buy some paint, to paint the office. Since there were two paints on sale, he ended up buying both and the two colors were - yes! - purple and yellow!
So I already know what to do, now the next question is what to do with this blogs title? Yes I'll be still wearing yellow, but I'll also wear purple. I guess for now I'll leave it as is, but please comment on this post, with what do you think I should do?

You can support my adventures with Team in Training, by clicking on the adds you see here, as all the money raised through the ads, will go towards my fund-raising goals with Team In Training.

First "sale"....

I was so excited, blabbing about my new GPS HRM, that Bryce decided to get one for himself. He had it express-shipped, so that he can take it with him on the relay run this weekend. I bet he will post his observations in his blog. Good luck in your race Bryce!

Morning run...

Yesterday at the boot-camp Russ offered that we can all run together a 5K course around the trail that we usually run the 1 mile TT. This was an off-the-record and non-boot-camp run. Both Bryce and I jumped on the idea - he needs to get more mileage before his relay run this weekend, and I wanted to get more testing of my Garmin Forerunner. We met around 8:15am and headed out to the trail. Russ roughly remembered from where to where the 5K distance would be, and we decided to compare his memory with what my GPS will show. Once we started the clock, we started to run fairly fast (~7min/mile pace) so at the corner (around 1/4 mile) we slowed down. We picked up the pace again on the stretches of straight path. We also tried to outrun the bugs which were swarming in large numbers.
For todays run I setup my GPS to mark laps every 1mile and also beep when I go over the max for my heart rate. This was working great as we get pretty easily split times while running. By the end of our run, I started closing on my max heart-rate, and about 1/2 of a mile before finish I had to slow down to keep it under 182. When we were less than 1/4 away from finish I picked up a little the pace (regardless of my heart-rate) to catch up with the other guys, so by the end I was at 186. I also had a brain fart near the end, when I pressed stop on my GPS at 3.01 mile mark, but in a split of a second I realized that it's a mistake and restarted the clock, for the final stretch to 3.1 mile mark.
Overall this was great run, but the bugs were extremely annoying. We made the whole run in roughly 24 minutes with an average pace of ~ 7:48/mile. Seems that I'm getting close to my desired pace, but I still need to get some mileage to be able to go for my ultimate goal - the marathon. the results are as always posted on the motionbased.com. Cheers!