Fundraising Update

Well, I am now about a week and a half into fundraising since sending out my kick-off note, and I am pleased with how things are moving along. I have raised $1,000 so far, which is about 12% of my goal of $8,500. That is a great start! As usually happens, my note results in a flurry of donations for a few days, and then a week goes by with an occasional donation. For example, I got one yesterday and one about four days ago. So it is almost time to send out an update to my e-mail list. I have one mostly ready to go, and will probably send it out Monday night.

I wanted to talk about my fundraising goal this season. The past few years, I have set my goal very high – $14,000 or $15,000 – and have never come close. So this year, I was thinking of setting it at a more attainable level. Since this is my fifth event for Team in Training, and I will be an eight year survivor in May, I wanted a number with a five and an eight in it. But $5,800 seemed too low to shoot for. As it turned out, raising $8,500 would top $50,000 for my five TNT campaigns and my Light the Night effort this past fall. Topping the half-century mark as a total is one of my goals this year, and I need to raise something like $8,300 to accomplish this. So that jived pretty well with setting my goal at $8,500. Now I just have achieve it! But I have always found people to be very generous, and I think that I am off to a great start, given the economy.

I haven’t yet had a Dallas Cowboys fan step up and donate $100 in order to force me to wear a Cowboys hat, but I do have a Seattle Seahawks hat coming. That actually is kind of cool, since that is where my race is. Cowboy fans, are you going to let a Seahawk fan best you? A guy yesterday at work donated $50 and in return I have to wear a multi-colored hat with a propeller on top of it for a week. Of course you know that I will be bringing a camera to work and getting a photo of that for this blog! Ditto for the Seahawks hat once it arrives from California.

I wish everything else was going as well as fund raising. As I write this, our first Summer Team training is cancelled due to rapidly falling snow. This is the second cancellation of Team in Training for snow in 6 weeks, and I never remember this happening before in my five years. Coach Ken from Michigan, don’t laugh too hard if you read this! And of course, our kick-off didn’t really happen, and so our Summer Team is getting off to a slow start. So it is good that at the least, fundraising is going well to date. I have been working out on my own at least a little, getting in a four mile run and walk the other night, doing water aerobics twice this week, and doing some weights last night. I also took a four mile walk in the wind and cold at lunch yesterday, walking around Belle Isle as the James River roared by. I was freezing in my light fleece, no hat, and no gloves, but I saw several people running along in shorts and a tee. They must be from Manitoba or somewhere like that where they button their short-sleeved shirt when it drops to 20 degrees. The snow will make it difficult to run for a good part of this coming week, so I may need to use the dreaded treadmill.