LIVESTRONG Seattle Marathon training week 25 - options

Hi everyone!  A little late on this week's blog entry, but better late than never... especially considering the good news!  On May 17, 2010, we hit our $1000 fundraising goal for Team LIVESTRONG!  Many thanks to all of you who donated, as this is a great cause - and many people will benefit from your generosity!


Last week's training was better than the last few.  I got in 3 rides and 1 run, rather than the 2/2 split I've been targeting.  Part of the reason is to give the legs a rest so they can put in some solid miles over the next 3 weeks before I start my taper.  Another reason is that it's been a bit easier to get in rides with some rainy weather outdoors.  In any case, the totals for last week were:

• Running: 4.89 miles in 41:03
• Cycling: 33.61 miles in 1:51:12
• Weight: steady at 197.6

Obviously, I need to continue to manage the weight.  I had hoped to be below 190 by race day, but it's looking like 190-192 might be at the edge of achievable assuming I get the eating habits back under control...

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering a variety of things to get back on track after the not-so-great long run.  I've settled on a compromise between the one-more-long-run and two-more-long-run approaches.  My current objective is to get in a 20-22 miler over Memorial Day weekend, then a 10-14 miler the weekend of June 12th.  That should give me base miles and endurance while putting me in good shape for a reasonable taper.  We'll see how that goes. :-)

The second option to consider is the one I put before all of you.  Now that we've achieved the Team LIVESTRONG fundraising goal, we can keep contributing to it and blow it out of the water.  If you want to help with that, donate here.  However, I have another event coming up in which we can also raise money for LIVESTRONG and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, as well as a local cancer unit here in Oregon: OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute.  That event?  My first 100-mile bike ride (known as a Century) at the Echelon Gran Fondo, which will occur in September.  So we have 4 months to hit an even bigger fundraising goal there: $2500!  If you want to help out with this new challenge, you can donate here.  In either case, you'll be supporting great charities that help those battling or recovering from cancer.

For those of you not familiar with centuries and gran fondos, I'll be posting more about those in the future.  But until then, onward...