Thank Yous & Running to the Pier

Hello everyone!

My fundraising is now officially underway as most of my letters have been delivered and already I’ve gotten an amazing response! I’ve decided that each week I’m going to post an entry to recognize all the wonderful people who’ve made donations that week. So here’s a list of all the donors for this week:

Deb Watkins
Adam Ghinazzi
Lois Abbott
Sheila Caruthers
Dora Watkins
Barb & Dan Ghinazzi
Bill & Annie Jornlin
Lena Perrot

Thank you all so much for your support, I really appreciate it!!

I also have some other running updates. This past Saturday Sarah and I went to the Summer Season ‘09 Kickoff downtown where we were basically just given a lot more information, especially about our upcoming trainings (ahhh!). Basically official trainings will be twice a week (Wednesday evenings and early Saturday mornings – 7am!!). What I found interesting is that instead of using distance as a measure for training, they use time – so for example at our first Saturday training we will be running for 30 minutes, and every subsequent Saturday run will increase by about 10 minutes, until we get up to 60 minutes by the end of February. So far all the Saturday practices for this month are at various beach locals around Santa Barbara, which should make for some lovely scenic runs. Also, after each Saturday practice there will be clinics on various aspects of running like stretching, nutrition, and injury prevention. Cool, right? Wednesday trainings are at the Santa Barbara Community College track and are focused on speed and technique rather than endurance. Unfortunately I’m going to miss these for the next 4 weeks since I have class Wednesday evenings, but I’ll be able to make them up on my own and once Spring quarter starts I’ll be able to participate. On the other days of the week we’re left on our own to run, but with the instructions of our coaches of course : ) I’ve been doing my 3.2 mile route for a week and a half now and it’s become quite comfortable, and I actually find myself looking forward to it! And I just have to say how lucky I am to be training in beautiful Santa Barbara – I run in the evenings just before sundown so by the time I get to the coast I’m rewarded with a postcard-perfect, gorgeous sunset! Definitely worth the effort : )

Sarah and I mapped out an even longer run that we wanted to try, running along the coast to the end of the pier at Goleta Beach - it was about 5 miles according to the website! Well today we did it and were able to finish it!! Granted we did go at a very slow pace and took a stretch break halfway at the end of the pier : ) Regardless, we ran for close to an hour and a half, which is way past where we are supposed to be right now, and the best part was how good we both felt after! I was tired but not exhausted, and probably could have just kept going! We actually took two slightly different routes there and then back, so when we got home we decided to map out exactly what we ran to get the exact diastance. Surprisingly, we did more than we expected - our run was a total of 5.7!! So anyway, this was very exciting for both of us and has made us eager to eventually go even further in the near future! Yay!