Message #12 From Your Artful Mentor

Hello, my San Diego bound mentees,

It is I, your Artful Mentor, with my weekly message to you. You are counting the weeks, thinking “Oh thank goodness that I only must endure 6 more messages from my Artful Mentor, unless he gets wild and crazy again and doubles his messages for a given week.” Could happen, so don’t be too sure that there are only 6 more messages after this one.

In any event, the San Diego marathon / half-marathon is only seven weeks away. You should start to feel excited about this, or a little nervous if you are among the walking wounded. If you are in the latter group, please, please, please keep your coaches in the loop.

Only a couple of you made the Hollywood Cemetery run yesterday. It is one of my favorites, year after year, and if you want to see what you missed, my blog has some of the details:

http://racn4acure.blogspot.com/2010/04/hills-of-hollywood.html

As the season winds down, how are you all doing? Since many of you are not getting to training, and because I missed a couple of weeks myself, I am not able to see most of you much. My job as mentor is not just to talk fundraising, but to help you with the overall experience of TNT as well. So other than training and injury concerns, which should go to our fantastic coaches, I am open to talking about anything that is going on that is impacting your experience in a positive or negative way. Just let me know. It is the goal of every LLS staff person, coach, and mentor that you have a great experience and many fond memories of your time with Team in Training. If getting together and chatting over a cup of coffee or a beer is helpful to you, even if you are right on top of your fundraising, then I will be there for you.

I will throw out two fundraising ideas this week.

1. What are friends for? Do you have a friend or two in distant places, someone who has their own circle of friends? Ask them to be a special satellite fundraiser for you by telling their friends all about your efforts and trying to encourage them to donate for you. This has been a really effective technique for me over the years. In some years, I have raised $2,000 - $2,500 directly from a friend or two helping. Even this year, where friends I used in the past seem kind of tapped out, I had a friend contact me a couple of weeks ago and asked if he could promote what I am doing on his Facebook. “Sure!” was my enthusiastic reply. Since then, seven of his friends have donated nearly $300 to my “Survivor in Seattle” campaign!

2. Movie Night! Hey, everyone loves a movie and popcorn, right? So invite a few friends over for movie night. Provide a double feature, make the popcorn, and serve beverages of everyone’s choices. Instead of them paying $10 for a ticket, $8 for popcorn, and $4 for a soda, ask for donations towards your fundraising. Repeat a few times with different friends and it can add up.
Remember to let Chuck know if you will be at the Wednesday after work training or not. It was a fun run we had last week.

Let me know if you need anything. If you want to chat, give me a call or email. Weeks always seem so busy, but I will find the time for you.

GO TEAM!
Art