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Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

This year I've ramped things up a bit and will be training on 2 teams with TNT to help eradicate all forms of blood cancer! I'll be training for the Seattle Marathon in June and the Minneapolis LifeTime Triathlon in July. I'm training to participate in these endurance events as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training. All of us on Team In Training (TNT) are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. I am completing these events in memory of my friend's mother who passed from myeloma in Feb '07, a coworker who passed in July 2008, in honor of Eric Dahlquist, our super hero teenage honoree who had his final chemo therapy in April '08 and for this adorable little girl pictured, Gracie, who was diagnosed at age 2 with AML, but has been in remission now for 2 years.

Blood cancers are the leading cause of death in children and younger adults under the age of 20. Every 4 minutes, someone is diagnosed, and every 10 minutes, someone dies! Being a father of 3 healthy kids, I can only pray for continued good health for them and teach them by example how to give back and help those in need.

I'll ask you 1 question - after seeing Gracie's picture, can you deny her the help she and all other leukemia patients need? Your donation helps end the threat of blood cancers taking more lives!

Please make a donation to support children like Gracie and Eric and families like my friend's. I am sensitive to today's economic environment so I thank you just for checking things out. No donation is too small (or too large) and immensely appreciated!

I hope you will visit my web site often. Be sure to check back frequently to see my progress and read my updates. I'll post blurbs on here every so often once training starts in February so bookmark this page to see how the TEAM is doing. Thanks for your support!

tidbit note - if you want to check out my blog - http//nbmcego.blogspot.com - more often than not I'll write about something training or race related so feel free to check in for some extra reading. I'll usually expound on topics there rather than here.

Jon

2/7/09 - The first week of training was a success! On the Tri side, we started with a swim workout on Wednesday, tough spin class on Thursday and a gorgeous morning for running today considering it's February. On the Marathon side, today's run was the first group session and there was a huge turnout! It's exciting to see so many people coming together for this cause! No aches and pains (yet) so everything's good! Keep up the fight!

2/21/09 - 3 weeks into it and things have been smooth sailing for the most part. Our Wednesday run this past week was a bit chilly with the gusting winds out of the north, but everyone persevered. Mother Nature wasn't in a good mood last night and dumped some snow on us so it made this morning's run a bit tricky, but we all survived the 5 miler. Kind of like running in sand on the beach...but colder.

Mark Tuesday, March 10th, down for lunch or dinner - Fuddrucker's in Bloomington is donating 20% of their sales to LLS if you take in a flyer. Contact me for a copy of the flyer - jack11mac@netzero.com - and I'll email it to you.

4/7/09 - A slight lapse in updated postings, but rest assured everything is still on track. The Marathon team is up to 14 mile runs for our long weekend workouts and soon enough the Tri team will be taking the bikes outside I hope. In just a few short weeks we'll even be swimming outside! That's hard to imagine considering snow was falling just 3 days ago. As you can see I'm still short of my needed fundraising minimum so please help out if you can. Gracie, Eric and I thank you!

5/8/09 - 7 weeks until the marathon, 9 until the triathlon. Things are coming along nicely. I did my first BRick (Bike, Run, ick) workout of the season last weekend and it went well - a 2 hr ride followed up with a 1 hr run. I'm convinced endurance athletes have very short term memories because during the workout I was wondering why I would put my body through this, but the next day I wanted to do it again! My "race" season begins tomorrow with my first organized event - 1/2 marathon (13.1 mile run) in New Prague. Send positive vibes that way starting at 8:00!

5/17/09 - Wow! That Ma Nature sure can be a blowhard when she wants to be! The Tri team had a ride in Afton Saturday morning. It's hard enough doing a hill workout on the bike, but throw a 20+ mph wind into the mix and it makes it that much harder. There were times I had to pedal going downhill in order to pick up speed! After a 25 mile ride I was never as glad to be done with it and go for a quick 2 mile run as I was that day. Sunday brought a long training run (18 miles) with the Marathon team that actually felt good considering I biked that hard the day before. Gotta keep pluggin' away!

5/23/09 - Thank you to everyone who donated and made this event possible! Your generosity is appreciated more than you'll ever know by those who this benefits. You did not donate for me, you donated for all those battling these blood cancers and on behalf of them we thank you with all our heart!

Our Marathon team leaves Thursday morning for our race on Saturday. It's shaping up to be a great weekend and as of right now even Mother Nature looks to be in a good mood for that day. You can track my progress online while the race is going on, if you so desire. Got to www.rnrseattle.com and search around for the buttons to push, it should be pretty self-evident. I'll post results next week when I get back.

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