Saturday, August 06, 2005

16 miles ... and then some!


We are now about halfway through our season and have been doing a lot of training – those of you who see us on a daily basis can attest to our slow, halted movement on Sundays and Mondays! ;)

We went for a nice 8 mile jog this morning on the Campbell Creek trail next to our house. This weekend was our “down” weekend -- we do a “short” run on the weekends between the really long runs -- it's funny that 8 miles is “short” to us now, isn’t it? Last weekend we had our 16-miler. I was particularly nervous for the 16-miler since we had such a rough finish on the 14-miler in Santa Cruz, however we both felt really good and finished much stronger.

We ran up in San Francisco and 95% of our run was on the marathon course, so it was a good training exercise for testing the conditions of the course. We started at Lake Merced, ran past the SF Zoo (pee-ew!), along the Ocean Beach Highway, into Golden Gate Park and then back the way we came. The scenery was fabulous! Lake Merced and the Ocean Beach were both very beautiful and soothing to run by. We ran by the old Dutch windmill (pictured below), which is apparently near the actual race finish line; and we also ran past the buffalo in Golden Gate Park, which always seems so odd when you're in the middle of San Francisco!

As if 16 miles wasn’t long enough, to everyone’s amusement, Adam and I missed the 16 mile turnaround and ran about 1-1.5 miles past it, so we ended up lengthening our run to about 17.5 miles! The turnaround was marked with chalk on the sidewalk, but it was near construction and we just didn't see it. We kept running what we knew must be too far, but we kept passing other TNT runners who were cheering us on, so we assumed we were going the right way. Finally, one of them told us they were doing their "60 minute run". Well, considering we had been running for nearly 2 hours at this point (we were around mile 12), this was obviously the wrong team. Luckily for us, about five other people did the same thing, so we didn't feel so dumb. Hey, at least we know we’ll be ready for our 18 mile run next weekend!

As for our fundraising, so far our team has raised a total of $80,542 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It takes approximately $40,000 to support a researcher for one year, which means we can already support two and we’re only halfway through our fundraising! Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to donate. We really appreciate it. As you see, you are making a tangible difference in the cause to cure cancer. If you have not yet had a chance to donate, but would like to, there is still time. Don't forget to check our training websites (in the Links section) where you can donate if you have not yet gotten a chance. You can also track our fundraising progress. We have raised approximately $1900 to date, but we still have $1700 to raise in order to reach our commitment of $3600.

We appreciate your support so much. I'll update the blog again after our 18 mile run next weekend -- we'll be very careful not to miss our turnaround this time!

~Angie (& Adam)

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