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Well this felt like a recovery week on all levels. It certainly was for training which my body needed. On the fundraising front, a late week push helped generate some funds but I had expected the week to be more about planning anyway and we made good progress there.
Well this felt like a recovery week on all levels. It certainly was for training which my body needed. On the fundraising front, a late week push helped generate some funds but I had expected the week to be more about planning anyway and we made good progress there.
Fundraising
We generated approximately $1,800 this week. Not much has been coming in the mail any more from my letters. I will send a second round over the summer that will hopefully generate more funds. We did good out of the gate but there was less participation than I had hoped. I am super grateful for everyone though. Many folks have given to me over the years and this venture might be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Later in the week I sent emails to all of my prior teams and that generated most of the funds that were raised. We had non-monetary wins/progress though.
Community Team
The biggest announcement ties to Community Teams. This will allow anyone to create their own page for this journey and raise their own funds that roll up to the total for the Road to Kona. As I keep saying, I want this journey to be for everyone touched by cancer and this will allow you to join the battle and fight back. You do not have to do a race. You can send letters and emails (I can help), you can have a garage sale, you can sell lemonade………whatever you want to do to raise funds is fine by us. There also is no minimum. You can raise $10 or $10,000. If you do want to incorporate a race it can be any distance you wish……….1 mile, 5K, 10K……..anything goes. If you choose to go the race route and want me to build a schedule for you, I would be happy to. I should pause here to mention a good friend of mine Javier Rivera is helping to lead the Community Team effort. He has already created an individual page and has spoken to folks that might be interested in joining. Javier and I met at Team in Training. He was a participant for my team and went on to great things. He has coached many seasons, he is currently on the Board of Directors for LLS, he is a fellow Ironman and he does all of this for his Mom who is a survivor. Our goal is to get a research grant in her name!!! Our goal is also for the Community Team to raise $30,000.
I will write a separate post on the Community Team and put it on our home page but I also want to point out that anyone who raises $300 will get a virtual or live entry to our Road to Kona 5K. It comes with a t-shirt, medal and if you join us live, all you can drink Bloody Mary’s or Mai Tai’s. If you feel you are ready to do this, you can create your page now with zero obligation. Just click the link below. Once you get to the site, click on JOIN AS INDIVIDUAL on the left side of the page and follow the instructions.
Logo
We finalized our logo and I really like it. I am a sucker for turtles. A huge thank you goes out to Teresa Weiss-Paczkowski of Elena Trevino Design for all her efforts to produce this logo. They have been there to support my efforts since I was in the 2014 Man of the Year campaign. They designed the original logo and they volunteered their services to produce the Gala program which helped to generate more fundraising dollars. Please check them out at:
Website: www.elenatevinodesign.com (website is being remodeled)
FB: Elena Trevino Design
Twitter: teresa paczkowski @tpacart
Instagram: teresa_elenatrevinodesign
FB: Elena Trevino Design
Twitter: teresa paczkowski @tpacart
Instagram: teresa_elenatrevinodesign
Anyway, the logo is above. This allows us to produce t-shirts. We will have this design on the front and the quote that has driven much of my experience at Team in Training on the back:
“It always seems impossible until it’s done” Nelson Mandela
It really is a great shirt and we hope you will like it. The logo and the t-shirt allow us to finalize the medal so that we can launch our virtual 5K and lock down our date for the live 5K in Venice, CA currently slated for Saturday, September 9th.
I believe that is it for fundraising. There was certainly a lot of work and planning but not all of it is newsworthy.
Paloma Sol
This is my daughter’s site www.palomasol.com . She makes unbelievable jewelry. She is also a cancer survivor. She has, without any intimidation by me, agreed to donate 25% of your purchases back to this mission. Check out her amazing work and use the code ROAD2KONA for free shipping and to make sure she knows to set aside the 25%. I will write a separate post about this as well.
Training
As I mentioned above, this was a recovery week. I always ramp up 2 weeks and then recover the third week. That means this week ramps up but my workouts will be challenged Tuesday and Wednesday because I am old. By old I mean I am having a Colonoscopy on Wednesday. Truth be told I am a little freaked out. I have spent so much time fighting cancer that I always feel it is out to get me………like it is some living breathing entity that seeks revenge.
Anyway, I only trained 106 miles last week. The toughest swim was a 3,000 yard swim. It was my longest of this training season and felt good. It was certainly a boost to the confidence. On the weekend, I had a brick workout that had me ride 3 hours and run 1.5 hours. I rode 50 miles and ran 9.62 miles. The best part of the week is that I remained pain free. It is unbelievable to train without any pain…….it has been so long
That is it for now. I hope you will join via a donation or via the Community Team.
Christopher D. Wilno
