"I taught Brock all I could... if only he were a little smarter... sigh." - Cory Papirny, Squidlip
Please sponsor me... again · 8 February 10
Hey Everyone!
On June 6th, 2010 I will once again be running for a personal best at the San Diego Marathon. A personal best in speed AND in fund raising as a member of Team In Training raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC). So, here I go again, asking you to help by making a contribution! When you contribute, you are supporting LLSC‘s mission to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. You can help by making a secure online donation using your credit card. Click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/brock-tnt
You will receive an email confirmation, along with a tax receipt for your donation (of $10 or more) and I will be notified as soon as you make your donation.
I’m completing this event in honour of all the people who are battling, or have battled, blood cancers, in particular my good friend Franny (who is currently in treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), my running buddy James (a Lymphoma survivor), my grandmother Lena (a lymphoma survivor), my grandfather Bill (who died of Lymphoma) and my cousin Janice (who lost her battle with Leukemia at the age of 28).
Every five minutes, someone learns that he or she has leukemia, Hodgkin (or non-Hodgkin) lymphoma or myeloma. Every ten minutes, someone dies of a blood cancer… so I don’t need to tell you how much I stand behind and believe in this cause.
Please, donate what you can and feel free to forward this email along to anyone and everyone – my personal fund raising goal is $5000 so every little bit helps!
I offer you a huge “thank you!!” in advance for your support and I very much appreciate your generosity!!
On Saturday I took the “Emergency First Aid
with Level A CPR + AED” from good old St. John Ambulance and, prior fears aside, I have to say it was pretty awesome (as a general interest course and as therapy to help get me over my medical fears/phobias).
I am SO READY to put people in the Recovery Position and wail on their chests if they are in any sort of cardiological distress. I even managed to make it through the amputation and partial amputation part of the course (I did go lay down in the back of the class when I started to feel faint but I stayed conscious and the class cheered from me when they video ended and I was still watching).
As interesting as I found it and as much as I think I could actually perform the appropriate actions, should the need arise, I am still hoping I never have to use these new skills… I cling tight to the notion that the human body is filled with a beautiful and magical white light rather than the goop science says it is filled with.
I track my workouts at www.workoutlog.com and these are my yearly totals for 2008 and 2009. I am posting my totals here partially so I have one place I can refer to, but also ‘cause I like to show off… hee hee.
2008
2009
Type
Distance
Distance
Run (trails & track)
1751.0 km
1512.6 km
Bike
472.4 km
1527.9 km
Swim
41475.0 m
28775.0 m
For the most part my totals went down due to spending 17+ weeks in a huge cast, splint, brace or just plain healing my messed up wrist. I am happy to see that my cycling distance went way up – I plan to keep it that way for 2010. I also plan to get my swimming up to 2008 levels again this year.
2009 Races:
St. Patricks Day 10k Run – Mar 15 BMO Vancouver Half Marathon – May 3
Dash’n for Compassion Half Marathon – May 9
San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon – May 31
Edm Canada Day 15k Road Race – July 1
St.Albert Starrt Triathlon (sprint) – July 26
Edmonton Intact Marathon – Aug 16
Younglife Ironbike (Jasper to Lake Louise) – Sept 12
Royal Victoria Marathon – Oct 11
2010 Races:
Maui Oceanfront Marathon – Jan 24th
Edmonton Hypothermic Half Marathon – Feb 28th
San Diego Rock & Roll Half Marathon – June 6th
Seattle Rock & Roll Marathon – June 26th
New York ING Marathon – Nov 7th
I am certain there will be more races added as the year goes on. I hope to do one Olympic Distance Tri this year… depending on how the wrist heals. Here’s to good healing!
The Movember Foundation challenges men to start Movember 1st (November 1st) clean shaven, then grow and groom their moustache for 30 days to raise awareness and funds to find a cure for prostate cancer.
I am proud to say that aside from having some awesome mos, my mo bro’s and I raised $2,015.00 for The Movember Foundation. Woo!
Remember, 1 in 6 men will get prostate cancer. Typically there are no symptoms until it’s spread beyond the prostate. Regular screening is vital as prostate cancer is 90% curable if detected and treated early. So get yourself checked!
Not too bad really, considering I had been on vacation for 3 weeks before the race, eating and drinking to my Spanish and Moroccan contentment. Not a personal best (still held by RVM 08 at 4:13:10)… but not bad.
I am sorry this is late in coming, I have no excuse other than my life being busy… but life should never be too busy to share good news with the people who will read the stuff I write.
As you may already know (or remember), on May 31st I ran in the San Diego Marathon as part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma’s “Team in Training” and, thanks to many of you, I was able to contribute $7335.07 to the funds raised to help find a cure for blood cancer. There were ~2200 of us running in the race from “Team in Training” and together we raised over $8.2 million dollars (net) that goes directly to research and patient care. Woohoo!
The race itself was amazing too. I had a little trouble with some cramping behind my knees and ended up not making my goal finishing time but due to the slow down I was able to relax, take it easy and really enjoy the race. There were bands playing at every mile, cheerleaders from local schools doing personalized cheers, themed water stations (my favourite being the “Back to the 80’s” one where they actually had a DeLorean) and tons of kids that wanted high-fives! It was great I tell you! GREAT!
So, once again I want to thank all of you who donated – $8.2 million is an amazing amount, and that is just for the one race. If we keep this up, how can they not find a cure?!?
PS. I am planning on doing this all again in the new year… so if you missed out this time, there is always next time!
All I ever seem to blog about these days are races… it must be spring!
I ran the Dash’n for Compassion race last year (in 1:55:36) and had an absolute blast (and consumed my body weight in brunch afterwards). This year it was a too soon after the Vancouver Marathon and too close before the San Diego Marathon to race it seriously but I wanted to support the cause, get the shirt and eat the brunch so I signed up anyway.
It was the San Diego portion of the Team in Training ‘s “peak training day” so a lot of us planned to do the race together and treat it as we would any Saturday run (we even headed out for a nice 5km run before the race started). I planned to do the official 21.1km in 2:20 and I ended up doing in it 2:19:38 (I should be a freakin’ pace bunny!).
The race was fun, hilly and quite challenging. The brunch was big, bacony and delicious. The shirt is classy, comfortable and really good quality. What more could we ask for? It was a hoot of a morning and I am sure I will be back next year! WOO!
I was on there for nearly a full year and although I posted more than 1000 tweets (twots?) in that time, I don’t think I ever fully “got” the whole Twitter thing. Maybe I was looking for too much from it. Maybe I was following too many people’s twots (tweets?). Maybe I just plain spend too much time on a computer (probably)?? But, in any case, when the whole “Swine Flu” stupidity overtook and smothered the nerd talk on Twitter, I knew it was time for me to go. Don’t worry, I won’t start ranting about H1N1 here – that rant needs more exclamation points than this blog can handle!!!!
I guess all that is left now is to say: So long Twitter followers, it was a thing…
So, aside from some problems on a hill in Stanley Park (damn you Prospect Point) I had a lovely 21.1km run on Sunday (May 3rd – Vancouver Half-Marathon).
My time was 1:54:05 (a pace of 5:25/km) which I think is not too bad. Beat my time from last July in Calgary (Alberta Jeep Dealer’s Half-Marathon – 1:55:02) by a minute and my time from last May in Edmonton (Dashin’ for Compassion – 1:55:36) by a minute and a half. Not bad. Was hoping for better but… damn you Prospect Point!
Everyone from Team in Training did awsomely well during the race. James Kercher kicked my butt at 1:49:51. Best of all, the 200 runners from Team in Training that participated at the marathon, raised nearly $1 Million for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! WOO!
Here is the only photo I have of the race. Thanks to my cousin Craig for snapping it with his Blackberry as I approached the chute.
If anyone is paying close attention to this blog anymore… mom?... they may notice that I have made some enhancements. I added a Twitter feed widget on the bottom left, changed my tagline, fixed up some out of date CSS (this site is from 2004 after all) and well… that is about it. Other than the Google Analytics code that I actually got around to adding to the whole site rather than just the blog.
Someday, when I have some time on my hands and the desire to be at a computer when I am not getting paid to be at a computer, I will do a complete redesign/rebuild of the site but until then… you are stuck with this. And me. YAY!
Oh yeah, I also fixed the “Comments” portion of the blog. For sometime now it has been hanging and timing out – that should be resolved now.
Hey Everyone!
On Saturday I took the “Emergency First Aid
I am sorry this is late in coming, I have no excuse other than my life being busy… but life should never be too busy to share good news with the people who will read the stuff I write.
All I ever seem to blog about these days are races… it must be spring!
So that is it. I quit 
So, aside from some problems on a hill in Stanley Park (damn you Prospect Point) I had a lovely 21.1km run on Sunday (May 3rd – Vancouver Half-Marathon). 
