Published September 21st, 2010
in General.
After taking off last year due to injury (dislocated shoulder and torn cartilage in wrist from snapped handlebars) I did the 2010 Josh Billings RunAground, once again as an Ironman but now in the 41+ category. I finished 2nd in my category and 3rd overall, 6 minutes behind overall (and 41+) winner Kent Lemme and 35 seconds behind Matt Cartier.
I had good endurance base due to my training for the Pan Mass Challenge and the outcome might have been quite different if the event was a longer and more demanding one. Not having done any bike racing in 8 years has really affected my ability to jump on breakaways. if I’m going to get away from the Ironmen who can run, I need to do it on the bike.
As it was, the top 3 Ironmen stuck together on the bike, even leading the pack on hillclimbs. I got into the canoe leg about 30 seconds behind the leaders, caught them, and built a 2 minute leas on them in the water despite running aground on the northern edge of Stockbridge Bowl. I held off Kent through the 2nd mile on the run and Matt didn’t catch me until 3.5 miles but the fact remains that I need to get out of the water about 8 minutes ahead of these runner specialists.
Goals for next year: Do more pack riding and some actual bike races, I can’t keep faking this; get in the canoe more – I definitely have an advantage here and need to build on it, set a new canoe leg record for myself; Lise more weight in order to make the run easier – lighter = faster; be healthy before the race – racing sleep-deprived and with a sinus infection means I’m just fooling around; get some help with my bike coordinator duties – pitting in 8 hours hand-sweeping the course and putting up signs is a strain my competitors are not subjecting themselves to 2 says before the race; get some childcare help – taking care of sick kids and babysitting for 2 days before the race prevented me from preparing materials during daylight hours and made me even more sleep-deprived.
Let’s see if I can do even 1/4 of these goals.
Published June 19th, 2010
in General.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who has given a donation, joined my Facebook support page, or even just given me a shout out or RT on Twitter for my 2010 Pan Mass Challenge fund drive. Without that support I wouldn’t be able to keep slugging away at this day-by-day.
I’m regularly getting up to 300 miles a week in mileage over the past few weeks.Last week my knees starting aching, particularly my left knee. I tracked it down to riding without knee coverings in the spell of cold weather we were having. For several days we never got out of the 50s and we didn’t get above 60 degrees for almost 2 weeks. Also, in doing some research, I followed suggestions to raise my saddle and focus on keeping my leg movements as linear as possible. After following that protocol for a few days the pain is almost gone. The other physical setback was having some kind of allergic reaction to pollen that must’ve been blown into my eyes during some extremely windy (and chilly days) – 5 days and most of a box of Benadryl later, my eyes weren’t swollen shut. What was weird was that I had no other symptoms: no runny nose, sneezing, or respiratory issues. I’d like to avoid this next year if possible.
Fundraising-wise we’re doing pretty good for starting the effort about 2 months ago. We’re over the 50% mark and there are some corporate donations slated but there have been a few frustrating issues. This is the Pan Mass Challenge but the majority of my donations have come out of state, courtesy of my very kind and supportive friends. I’d like to see more donations from Massachusetts, particularly the Berkshires where I live but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to get people to convert. These are people who will most likely know someone who has gone to Dana Farber for treatment or who would seek treatment for themselves there. It’s great that there’s over 170 people in my Facebook Support group but its strange that we’re not seeing some people that we know pretty well and who we know have the resources haven’t joined the group or made a donation. OK, so perhaps you can’t give, literally, just a few dollars this year but why can’t you join the group? I get a lot of invites to groups and I join most of them but some of these people aren’t reciprocating – and this is for a serious charity effort.
Alright, so I apologize for venting a bit. On the whole I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed by the support I have received and genuinely surprised by whom has helped me, some with multiple commitments – it really almost pushed me to tears on several occasions. It’s been great to find out more about people, how they’ve been affected by cancer, and to make this connection with them. I hope to be able to provide similar support for everybody who has helped me when I get the opportunity to do so. It’s kind of a strange way to find a way to be optimistic about life and people but that’s probably a good part of why I got involved in the PMC. If you’ve signed up to help me this year, thank you so very much, you are incredible.
Published May 15th, 2010
in General.
Published April 21st, 2010
in General.
I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring and sign up for the Pan-Mass Challenge to raise funds for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. For me, this means raising $5,000 and riding about 300 miles from New York State to the very tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown.
PLEASE SHARE MY DONATION PAGE WITH FRIENDS and make a contribution. 100% of the donation goes to cancer research and it’s tax deductible. I will be posting progress here and welcome your feedback and ideas on how to raise the $5000.
Published April 8th, 2010
in General.
I was really pleased to see that a subset of my Vancouver Olympics photos were featured at FasterSkier.com today. The editor had asked me to put together a Flickr gallery of my “best shots” and I did so, emphasizing the cross-country and biathlon events that I went to.
Hopefully people will check out my entire photo set of the Olympics which I’m almost done identifying and captioning – perhaps there are 30 or less photos to process at this point.
The funny thing is that in looking over FasterSkier.com, I discovered that they are based out of Williamstown, MA, about 15 miles north of where I live. Many thanks to editor Topher Sabot who posted the link. Would be cool to meet those guys in person sometime.
