Since I didn't have anyone to take my picture at the race, this is the best I can do:

I am happy to report I finished all 13.1 miles. The hills were not all that, it didn't start to rain until mile 10, the firefighters in tuxes were just as cute as promised, and the Tiffany necklace is lovely. Thank you again to everyone who supported me in my training and who donated so generously to LLS. When the donations of my co-workers through Standard's Employee Giving Campaign and Standard's match are finally counted, I will have raised more than $5000 to fight blood cancers. That is truly an accomplishment.

The race is this Sunday! I leave this afternoon for San Francisco. I have some business in town this week, then I'll enjoy the city for a couple of days. I'm so excited and so ready for this event! Thank you again to everyone who supported me in my training and fundraising. I will be thinking of all of you as I run 13.1 miles on the streets of San Francisco.

The race is less than two weeks away! This means we get to start the tapering phase of our training. Yay! I ran 8 nice flat miles on Saturday and I'm happy to report I had no back pain at all and I was pretty much at my pre-injury training pace. I am confident I will finish the race with only the expected amount of pain from running 13.1 miles.

I want to give a special shout out to my double Titanium donor - Linda Lawson. Thanks to Linda I blew right past my fundraising goal this week. Awesome! More importantly, I have now raised more than $4000 to help find a cure for blood cancers.

I also want to say thank you to my co-workers who have made donations to LLS via the Employee Giving Campaign at work. Through this program, our employer will match their donations so LLS gets double. Thanks to Standard for a really great program and thanks to Carla, Derily, Jessica, Shirley and Holly for your generous donations. Your names might not show up on the list on this website, but I assure you your contributions are greatly appreciated.

The Nike Women's Half Marathon is only three weeks from today! I finished the 11-mile run with my TNT teammates yesterday on the most beautiful fall Saturday imaginable. For some reason known only to him, Coach Karl made us all show up at 6:30 am. It was dark and chilly and I was kind of grumpy. But as we ran from Duniway track down to the waterfront, the sun was coming up, the river was calm and glassy, the mountain was just starting to reveal itself and it was perfect. After a loop down to the Steel Bridge and back to Duniway, it was up Terwilliger for some final hill practice to prepare for San Francisco. The views from the top of Terwilliger are always stunning, but yesterday morning they were exquisite. The South Waterfront condo towers were just poking out of the fog, the sun was higher so the mountain was front and center, and the trees are just starting to turn to their fall colors. It was almost enough to make me forget about my nagging back pain. I was slower than I would like and definitely slower than I was 2 weeks ago before this little set-back, but it's much improved over last week. We start to taper now so I'm sure by race day I will be close to 100%.

Now it's time to focus on reaching 100% of my fundraising goal. I need to raise $555 more to reach my goal of $3500. I feel like I've hit up almost everyone I know, but I'll be sending out one more email this week to anyone I may have missed and to those who have promised to contribute.

As always, thank you to everyone who has already contributed so generously to the important cause of finding a cure for blood cancers. You all rock!