Training week 1

Well, I've started a blog! I knew about blogspot as a popular domain, but when I looked it up, I can't say I was surprised to find out that it has been acquired by Google. So this is happening through my Google account. Blogging is definitely new for me and while I used to adore writing, I think being an engineering student has kind of squelched a lot of my desire to write. Since I don't always know where to start, I also anticipate updating my blog being a struggle, but I will try to do at least one update per week. :)

Basically, this summer, I am biking across the country for cancer! To avoid giving the spiel that many of my readers will have already heard - here is my fundraising profile, which will explain why I decided to do such a thing. In this blog I hope to document the three major steps of this journey: the training, the fundraising, and the ride itself. 

Just a little background info for things that may come up in the blog - my roommate, Chelsea, is also doing this ride with me. Her mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is currently recovering from surgery. We plan to do a lot of the fundraising and training together. As far as training goes, I'm starting out in fairly good shape, but I haven't actively trained for anything since high school cross country. Luckily, due to some great coaches in high school (Donnie & Mr. Izzo), I feel like I know enough about training to be able to incorporate strength, speed, hills, and cross training to make a good training schedule. So, as of now, my plan is: 

2 days of 55-minute hills/strength workouts on the stationary bike
one day of running (~4 miles)
one day of Body Pump (great weight lifting class at the gym)
one day of swimming (1 mile)
one day of a long road cycle, working up from 20 miles to hopefully 100 by the time we leave

I'll see how this goes and make changes as needed, and as the big day gets closer (June 2nd), I may cut out some of the cross training in favor of more cycling. I also bought a fitness mat and made up a 15-minute strength training workout based on exercises we used to do in high school 'Exerobics' (Mrs. Fry you're the best!!) that I'm going to do 3x per week.

A lot has happened in the past week! I started officially training for the ride, started school for the semester, and raised $1,500! I'm beginning to realize just how much my life is going to be revolving around the 4K for the next 7 months. Basically here is how this adventure has started out.

Monday - Started my official training. After 40 minutes of hills on the stationary bike I couldn't feel my butt. That's when I knew this was going to be a long journey.
Tuesday - I mailed out 65 letters to friends and family explaining what I am doing and why, and asking for their support. This was pretty hard for me to do, because I don't like asking for things from people without earning them. But I had to get past that and realize that, first of all, the donations are not going to me, but to cancer patients in need, and second, many people are glad to support a worthy cause and are often just waiting for a good opportunity. I also went running and remembered I needed things like notebooks and pencils for the upcoming semester. 
Wednesday - Classes started. Pretty uneventful. Chels and I tried to go to a spin class after orchestra, but it was full. Luckily I think those are the New-Years-Resolutioners who will be gone by next week, so we'll plan to go to that in the future. Instead we hit the gym and did a really hard hills workout on the stationary bikes.
Thursday - Chels and I went grocery shopping for our tapas fundraising dinner. I then babysat (new job for this semester) and afterwards we went to Body Pump together. I upped my weight, and couldn't feel most of my body for the next 2 days
Friday - After class Chels and I had quite the adventure getting to Baltimore for the 4K for Cancer Kick-off event. We really wanted to go, but it was snowing, and the Friday evening rush hour was looking pretty awful on Google Maps. So we opted for public transportation. We took a car, train, taxi, and bus in order to get there and back. This event was our first face time with any 4K people - our interviews were over the phone. We were really glad we went to the event and got to meet a lot of cool people both on our ride and on others :) We also got a lot of our questions answered and just got more motivated and excited for the summer in general. Chels and I started cooking some desserts for Saturday when we got back home. We spent some time running around like maniacs knocking on every door in the apartment complex and asking if they had vanilla extract, after the Nutella fudge was already in the works and we discovered we were out. Turns out we were apparently the ONLY ones staying in on a Friday night, and with no luck we used maple syrup (it turned out good, for the record).

Making the cake pops

Saturday - Chels and I spent the whole day cooking the tapas for our fundraising party. Andrew also helped a ton and made the focaccia (which everyone incorrectly called pizza). I also squeezed in a swimming workout. The menu: focaccia, bruschetta, cheese and crackers, sausage, chicken, spinach and artichoke dip, fries (homemade of course), deviled eggs, Cake pops, sopapillas, chocolate fountain, and Nutella fudge. The recipes came from family members, friends, Pinterest, and the top of our heads. The party was a major success and we had a lot more people show up than we expected. The food vanished and it seemed like everyone had fun. People also donated more than we expected, and were so supportive of our trip. We are so grateful for amazing friends. 

Le food 

Nutella fudge

Sunday - Chels and I embarked on our first road cycle, also bringing Andrew. We wrestled with the bike rack she has for a bit, and finally got the bikes on the back of her car. We headed off to Annapolis where we planned to do the "Historic Annapolis Ramble," as told by trails.com. Well, it should have been called "fails.com," because the supposed route was blocked by things like nonexistent roads and brick walls. Sooo after our initial plans failed, we rode randomly around historic Annapolis until we realized it was way too crowded and a little icy, and we were never going to finish 20 miles there. So, we headed back to the car and found a little trail around the Naval Academy's stadium that was 1.25 miles long, and proceeded to do laps around the trail until we had finished 20 miles :). It got boring pretty fast, but it was still a good workout and completely exhausting - probably also due to the cold - it was about 30 degrees and we were freezing for most of the ride. The good news was the cold motivated us to ride faster. On our way back, we rewarded ourselves with some Chipotle. When we got back we checked Facebook and found out that someone had submitted a "Maryland Compliment" about us and how we are "warrior women" for what we are doing for this cause. Maryland Compliments is a Facebook page that accepts and posts anonymous compliments about anyone that attends the university. Most major universities have their own page as well. We were so flattered that someone said that -- if the lovely individual responsible is currently reading, THANK YOU! :) Motivation like that is what's going to keep us going on this journey. So, for next week: Find a trail that will actually work. Also: cancel subscription for trails.com. 

Candid "Before" picture: After Chelsea accidentally punched me in the head -- 
good thing I was wearing my helmet ;)

Chelsea attempting to navigate the nonexistent bike route.

Historic Annapolis

20 miles later: The "After" picture

In literally two days, my fundraising total has nearly doubled-- from $1750 to about $3300. Thank you EVERYONE that has made this happen. I am absolutely floored by the generosity of friends and family, and surprised to realize just how deep the roots are that cancer has unfortunately planted in the lives of everyone I know. Several people at our tapas dinner had great fundraising ideas for me and I am eager to try them out. $3300 is a big number and it has dawned on me that this is going to actually make a difference. Due to my excitement for this adventure, I'm feeling less than motivated for this semester school-wise, and that needs to change ASAP. I haven't had homework yet, but that's going to change quickly, and I already have a quiz tomorrow. Training is going to take a lot of time and energy out of me and I need to be on top of my time management...which was never really one of my strengths in the first place. 

In my future blog posts I won't be so thorough, because it will probably all begin to look the same: school-work-training-homework-sleep-repeat, and I don't want to bore you to tears. But this week was pretty exciting so I thought I'd share. To do this week: go to Princeton Sports to get sized for my official 4K bike, get a good start in my classes, and buy some of my cycling gear. I'm thinking I might want a bike trainer, but they are expensive, so I might keep an eye on Craigslist or Ebay for one of those. We also may look for a bigger bike rack, one that holds 4 bikes, so we can take friends with us on our training rides as we have several friends that are interested in joining us!

Thank you for reading, and for your continued support!

XOXO,
Mary