I will also be giving away a pound of Peet's coffee beans to five lucky donors! Thanks to Peet's Coffee & Tea in Midtown Palo Alto for donating the beans. Visit them for a latte next time you're in the 'hood.

Hi everyone,

I am happy to announce the prizes that I will giving away to those who make donations the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through my fundraising page! Unfortunately, these prizes are limited to those in the Bay Area due to restrictions and practical reasons, but I am hoping to add more for those donors who are further afield, so I'll keep you updated on that.

For each prize drawing, I will enter your name once for every $25 that you donate. So if you donate $100, your name will be entered four times. I will draw winners sometime after September 15th, which is the last day for fundraising.

There are four prizes:

Two 1-month passes to Equinox in Palo Alto! This club is amazing -- rooftop pool, sauna, tons of fitness classes (including yoga), and, my personal favorite, refrigerated, eucalyptus-scented towels in the cardio area. (Yes, really.) These passes include an Equifit fitness evaluation and a personal training session. Each pass is valued at $395! I will be giving these passes away individually, so there will be two winners, and I will automatically enter your name if you live on the Peninsula. For those who live in San Francisco and are willing to make the trek down to the Palo Alto club if you win, just let me know and I will enter your name, too.

Two people will win baked goods from me. (Yes, this is kind of the opposite of winning the Equinox prize, but much more delicious.) If you win, we can talk about what you'd like, using two dozen cupcakes as a benchmark. Anyone living in the Bay Area will be entered to win this prize.

Like I said, I'm trying to secure a couple more prizes for donors who don't live in the Bay Area, so I'll report back if those work out.

Good luck and thanks for donating!

We had a great group run today out in Pacifica along the coast. We lucked out and got an absolutely gorgeous morning out there -- sunny, blue skies, cool ocean breeze. Very unlikely for Pacifica. It was magical.

Jermaine and I ran 8 miles today -- ! We can't help but be a little impressed with ourselves, as this is the furthest either of us has run. And if you could see the hills and switchbacks we were dealing with, you'd be impressed, too!

This is also the first time I'd ever run with a water belt, which I quite liked. I was afraid it'd bounce around too much, but it was perfect and I liked being able to hydrate when I felt like it rather than waiting for the water station. Speaking of the water station, I will sometimes take the gummy bears they have there because, well, gummy bears are awesome, but this time the Starburst and M&Ms served an actual purpose -- getting a sugar blast at 4 miles and 6 miles was really helpful and got me thinking about what kind of sugary stuff I should carry on my long runs, now that they're getting up there in miles. I've been informed that there are GU packets with caffeine in them, and that sounds pretty good to me, so I'll have to check it out.

I just made and ate a bunch of pancakes with peanut butter to re-fuel, and now I'm ready for a long shower. Feels great to have that run under our belts and to know that we've already covered about two thirds of the distance, while still having about 9 weeks of training left!

We had our third group run on Saturday at Shoreline Park in Mountain View. The weather was great -- sunny, but not too warm with a nice breeze off the bay -- and I had my running buddy, Jermaine, with me this time. We decided to go for six miles and it turned out to be a really nice, easy run. I was really surprised by how quickly the miles seemed to pass, but I've learned that you can't overestimate the importance of beautiful scenery and a good running partner when it comes to knocking out the distance you've set out to run.

We actually ended up going closer to six and a half miles or so because we missed the last turn! I don't think it was marked very well because there were about five or six of us that all made the same mistake. Oh well, at least we realized pretty quickly that our surroundings didn't look right and that we'd been running far too long after the last mile marker!

I was slow to update after this run because I left town right afterwards for the rest of the weekend. It's raining pretty heavily in Palo Alto right now (in June?!), but I'm planning on a four mile run tonight, assuming it lets up a little.

Just had a nice mid-week run to celebrate summer solstice. It wasn't much cooler during my run tonight than it was on Saturday, but running around sunset instead of midday made a huge difference. Not to mention that it has been so hot during the day lately that 74 degrees felt like a nice relief in comparison! Overall, it was an easy 3.1 miles at a 10 min/mile pace.