Monday, July 13, 2009

5 Mile Run, Donating Blood and New Motivation!

I would have loved to have said that the day started for me when I got out of bed for my morning run, but my 3 year old had a different plan :-(

He was up a bunch during the night - so my wife and I were also up at different times trying to get him to go back to sleep.

Somehow, I woke up a little before 6am and got my behind out the door. I was mixing up the week's runs and doing my mid-week longer run today, since I was giving blood on my lunch break (which means the rest of my runs this week will be slow, lethargic and with an average HR of about 10-20 bpm higher than normal...joy, joy! - but it's all for a good cause, so I continue to do it).

I ran the 5 miles at a 10:37/mile pace - but with an average HR of 156, which again is on the high side. I really need to slow it down, but I had two things going against me this morning. First of all, I was tired - so this probably contributed to my HR being higher. Second of all, I was listening to Green Day's new album, so I know I was responding to some of the loud, fast music at times and then I realized it and had to slow myself down.

I worked at Chloe's Coffee this morning since Sherry was tutoring in our shared office space. I poured myself a travel mug of what I thought was decaf...but for some reason I started to get a bit hyped up. Either I'm getting ultra sensitive to caffeine, or the coffee I took was caffeinated (or half caf or something like that).

By the time lunchtime came around and I went to give blood, I felt really antsy. However, it didn't impact my pulse or blood pressure as they were fine (pulse of 60 bpm, blood pressure of 118 over 78). Perhaps it made me bleed a little faster, as I filled up that pint in less than 9 minutes...probably a record for me!

When I got home from work, I had a package waiting for me...my long awaited binder from Team Run To Remember! There's tons of information in the binder - some about marathon running in general, some maps of running routes in New York City and some great information about fundraising and public relations (which can lead to more fundraising...).

I started to look at some of the fundraising ideas, and I definitely have some new motivation. One of the ideas that I really want to start looking into is to see if some of the local establishments that I frequent will agree to donate a % of their proceeds on a particular date to the Alzheimer's Association (or if not all proceeds then at least the proceeds for the people that I bring to the establishment through my own promoting the event).

There are many either single proprietor or non-chain restaurants/cafe's that I go to in the area - such as Dogfish Head Alehouse, Star Diner, The Wine Harvest, Crepes-a-Go-Go, CaliYOgurt and Chloe's Coffee which I had mentioned earlier - which I may be able to convince to do something like this. I'll likely start asking some of the owners about this in the next week or so...hopefully I can line some of these up.

One other fundraising note - I have surpassed the $500 mark now! Woo hoo! I have set a goal of $5,000, so I'm only 10% there, but I'm still 17 weeks away...

You can help by leaving a donation here...

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