Run in honor of Carmen: Fundraiser to fight blood cancer

This month I started my fundraiser and my training for the Cologne half marathon on September 14th, 2014. I am very exited about that date and about the progress of my training. I thought it would be a lot harder for me to stick to the training intervals. I also found that the recommend pace in my plan are quite unrealistic. I am aiming at a finisher time of 2:15 hours which was the slowest race plan I was able to purchase from my Runtastic Gold membership. But: I made great some progress within the last two trainings in regard to pace. In my last training interval the given pace was set to 7:15 minutes per kilometer. I ran 6K and all intervals were under 7 minutes. In a half marathon race that would have been a finish time of 2h 10 minutes. A huge motivational boost came through the approval of Chris and Heather whom I had asked  if it was okay for me to write about their story from my perspective on my blog. It meant a lot to me that they OK-ed it. Love you guys! Today came another nice motivator: My timing chip arrived to day. YEAH!

The chart above shows my training progress so far. All is good except that on average my heart rate is too high for too long during practice. I will try to take a slower pace in the next few intervals to keep heart rates within the recommended limits and work on pace again later.

Carmen on my mind

It just feels wonderful to have this determination inside of me burn to tun in honor of Carmen Leolani White and to raise funds for the fight against blood cancer. Thinking about Carmen and Team White while running has become a nice habit. It helps me get through my training intervals more easily because the extra kilos I am currently dragging around make it quite hard for me at times to keep up a relatively high pace. For my fundraiser I still have to figure out ways and events to raise those funds. Here in Germany it is not very common to raise funds the way it is done in the states. I just love to see the pictures and updates of Team Carmen. For the last two years they organized awesome fundraiser events (like yard sales, dinners or luncheons etc. I thought of maybe inviting some friends and neighbors for a whine tasting with fingerfood or a friday-night cocktail+DJ event. Also our Basement needs a cleanup and I am pretty sure there is some stuff other people are willing to pay a few bucks for. If any of my readers has any recommendations or help on how to organize a fundraiser event please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Team Carmen and Fundraiser

There is a nice article over on the North Hawaiian News about Carmen, Heather, Chris and Trevor and how the idea of creating Team Carmen to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to fight blood cancer:

Michelle Marshall, the mother of one of Carmen’s friends, arranged to have Carmen named as the Honorary Angel for the Lavaman Waikoloa at last year’s event in March. Marshall suggested they create a team to run the race. The Whites were honored by the idea. Despite their devastation, they chose to fight on, and Team Carmen was born. “Their story was so special, how they turned tragedy into something positive,” said Gerry Rott, Lavaman race director and founder, who chose Carmen as the race’s Honorary Angel. “I admired that.” They quickly assembled a 17-person team from their family, friends and co-workers who were eager to make a difference for the family, with participants hailing from Hawaii, Oregon, and California. Fueled by the memory and spirit of Carmen, in just three months, they were able to raise more than $31,000 for Team in Training, to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society with funding to use in the fight to find a cure for leukemia.

$31,000 in three months!!!! But it gets better: In 2014 Team Carmen raised another 53,000 dollars as you can read on their blog after this years Lavaman Triathlon. Wow!!! Very inspiring. I’ll try my best to finish the half marathon in honor of Carmen and reach my goal of raising 1975 Euro. It is till a long way to go but I since I’ve only started I am quite optimistic that it will work out. If you’d like to support my fundraiser through an online donation you can do so by clicking on the link on the homepage. It will lead you to my project page on Betterplace (DE/ EN), a german non-profit platform to organize fundraisers. Originally I wanted to directly raise funds for the LLS but since their interface is only in English I decided to go with Betterplace to better reach those friends and family who don’t speak English and might feel more comfortable using their banking details on an German site.