Hello Everyone -

It’s been a crazy summer.  I am sure I havent updated this in at least a month, i’m really sorry.  Life, and work, and the summer heat got the best of me… it’s been a bit of a challenge to juggle my regular 9-5, fundraising, volunteering, and still staying on track with training, but somehow i’ve survived it!

Thank you so much to every friend, family member, co-worker, and contest participant who has supported this cause and helped me reach my fundraising goal.

As of this week, I have met my required minimum! $2,400!  I’m going to try to maintain a personal goal of $3,000 by the race date, so please tell all your friends to stop by and visit my fundraising page. http://tinyurl.com/TNTLianne 

Training has been such a crazy whirlwind.  The last time I wrote, I was still working my way up to a 12 mile run!  In the weeks that followed, we slowly climbed our way through the miles, to 16, 18, and 20!!  20 miles, man, let me tell you how much i just LOVED putting myself through that.  haha!  The good news about finishing 20 is that is as hard as our training is going to get.  This week we start to taper, with a nice recovery run of 12 miles, and it’s all downhill from there.  I’d be lying if I said I’m not nervous about how i’m going to pull another 6.2 miles out of myself on race day, but I guess it’s got to happen!  My shins are going to be thankful for the rest in the weeks leading up to the race.  

I think my congratulations on surviving training/fundraising gift to myself is going to be a watch that will do interval timing that I can wear on race day.  I’m not going for the big bucks on a GPS watch just yet, since my phone can take care of that for me, but I’m certain I’m going to need my own interval timer if I want to make it out of Nike alive and maintain my usual pace!

Pictures of fun people and fun things to come.

is unbearable!  Yesterday I woke up at 3:30am to join the “early” group of our team that starts their run at 4:30 instead of 5:45.  We got most of our ten miles in for the weekend before the sun even came up.  It was pretty hard getting out of bed that morning, but I guess it was a good idea afterall.  

I’ve been battling those stupid shin splints for a couple weeks now.  After last week’s training, when I was only able to run 6 of the 12 scheduled miles, I thought “enough is enough,” and took my sore legs to Ft. Worth Running Company.  They did a slow-mo video analysis of my gait and we decided i need a new shoe with more stability for moderate to severe pronators. sigh. I’m not in too much pain today, so I think at least they are working!

Last week we had a recommitment event for the Nike Women’s Marathon.  I bit the bullet and turned in all my paperwork that evening, even though we really had til this tuesday to mull it over.  I am pretty excited that this means it is all really happening now, but of course I’m still nervous because this also means I just promised to raise the other 1600 dollars I’m still missing from my fundraising minimum.  I’ve got a couple ideas to keep the money coming, but if you’re reading this, every penny still helps!!  Please don’t forget to check out my fundraising page at http://tinyurl.com/tntlianne.  

To keep this slightly less boring, here’s my most recent picture with Andrew to celebrate how far someone can come from battling blood cancers thanks to the research we have today!  And also to celebrate the upcoming release of People & Things and the fact that there will actually be a show in Dallas!  Who’s excited? This girl.

Soo the last week and a half has not been the most fun.  After my trip to OKC, i went on a 12 mile run with 2 of my team mates.  it was awesome at the time being!  it’s a really cool feeling knowing you’ve just accomplished something you’ve never done before, or run farther than you ever have before!  However, the next day my shins were feelin’ it.  They were feelin it so much, in fact, that I had to skip out on the tuesday night team run…. and then the thursday night team run… and THEN the saturday morning run.  I spent a lot of time googling stretches and techniques to speed up the process to non-achey shins during my time off the road though, and yesterday i was finally able to join some of the team for another tuesday night run!  I’ve been super busy at work this past week which has distracted me a bit, but i’m ready to get back into the swing of things, with running AND fundraising!  Thanks so much Uncle James and Grandma for being my latest donors!  Wish me luck! 

Well, my weekend in Oklahoma didn’t go quite as I’d originally planned.  Last night I saw Jack’s Mannequin with some of my friends.  It was great to see Andrew play some music after an entire year without seeing him.  Andrew, if you ever read this, thanks for yet another great show!  Can’t wait for the new album to come out. 

This morning I would have liked to have joined OKC’s team in training for my long distance run, but it turns out they change their schedules a lot and did not train this morning.  So, I will be doing 10-12 miles tomorrow morning with a couple of people from my local team that also missed today’s training.  I think I will finally feel like a runner when I can say I’ve done ten miles!  

 Please keep my fundraising efforts in mind, folks.  I am about 1/3 of the way to my goal, but still have a long way to go!  http://tinyurl.com/TNTlianne 

Have a great weekend!

Lianne

Wow, what a crazy busy two weeks it has been!  

First off, let me start this week’s update with giant THANK YOU’s to some of my friends!
Thank you thank you thank you to Marissa, Lindsay, Allie, and Phil for helping me with the F5 challenge!! A huge thanks to my overseas buddy, Steph for her very generous donation.  We miss you Steph!  And last but not least, thank you Jose, my wonderful boyfriend.  I love you!

This was a great week of fundraising and I couldn’t have done it without all of you guys!!  Please keep an eye on my training progress as the months continue to pass and please spread the word that I am working towards a fundraising goal that will help fund research that can benefit not just the thousands of victims of blood cancer, but many other types of cancer patients as well some day.  Something really cool to think about — Leukemia & Lymphomy Society were the main support and providers of the research that led to chemotherapy, which now treats patients with countless variations of cancer!  Just last month, LLS launched four new drug development partnerships and will provide funding for the clinical trial treatments of patients with certain forms of myelogenous leukemia.  

Not much to report on the training side of things other than that I am slowly making progress with my mileage.  The evening runs are getting harder and harder even though the distance remains the same, but the heat is so hard to deal with out there.  The past two saturdays, our long distance run was 8 miles, which is a new distance record for me.  My pace has slowed to about an 11 minute mile, but I am just glad to be completing the distances at this point.  Next week, I am going to try to train with Oklahoma City’s team for my first ten mile run!  I will be in OKC on Friday night to see Jack’s Mannequin.  I am excited to tell Andrew about the team and that I will be running the Nike Women’s Marathon in his honor.  Most of all, I’m excited to see Jack’s Mannequin again for the first time since last February!

Take care my friends!

Hello Friends!

TODAY, our team begins the “F5,” or the Fast & Furious $5 Facebook (shh..or tumblr) Challenge.  Please reblog this to all your friends and help me win this challenge!  I NEED YOUR HELP TO WIN!  Why do I want to win so bad?  Well, first, it will bring me closer to my goal of raising $3,200 towards cancer research, which is very important, and second, Ryan, our campaign coordinator, gives out cool prizes sometimes to people who win challenges, like hats, socks, puppies and sunshine.  One of these days i’m gonna get a hat ryan!

You can help me win, by simply going to http://tinyurl.com/TNTLianne between now and July 6th and throwing down a mere FIVE of your hard earned dollars on my fundraising goal!

So, PLEASE save that venti caramel macchiato you were gonna buy yourself tomorrow morning for a rainy day and send $5 my way instead!

PS, thank you Mao for being my most recent supporter! I miss you! Hope you’re doing lots of exciting lawyer things. 

This morning we had a huge turn out!  A guest speaker came and hosted a nutrition clinic so we understand how to eat properly as our activity levels continue to increase.  Who knew that snacks are supposed to come from at least 2 food groups to keep you full!? I didn’t..

Afterwards we did a GREAT 5 mile run near parts of grapevine lake.  My nike+ sportband said I came back with a total of 5.3 more miles under my belt with a time of 54 minutes.  I am really stoked about this because it means I was able to maintain approx a 10 minute mile, even with the increased distance!  I am already excited for next weekend and a 6 mile run.  

Thank you to my friend Kristen back home in Orlando for supporting my cause!!