Marathon training (and fundraising), week 4

Good thing I don't have to bike before the Boston Marathon!

Working hard, going nowhere

Running in circles

On Saturday I joined my triathlon club for a brick (bike/run) workout.  We alternated between cycling intervals on our bikes and running on the track, with some strength work mixed in to make our legs extra-tired.  Not exactly a marathon-specific workout, but it was fun!  In a quad-burning kind of way.

More relevant to marathon preparation, I ran 39 miles last week as follows:

Tuesday - 7 miles on the track with TRIbe
                warm up, drills, strides
                2 x 400m (pacing), 2 mile time trial!
                cool down, lunges/squats, core
Thursday - 7 miles on trails (Baylands)
Friday - 3 easy miles on trails (Baylands)
Saturday - 6 miles on the track with TRIbe
Sunday - 16 miles in the rain (Los Gatos Creek Trail) 

Garmin data from Sunday is here.  Too bad my watch doesn't record total rainfall!  Or water accumulated in my shoes.  There probably is a Garmin device that does that.

Soggy post-run self-portrait

The 2 mile time trial is quite possibly my least favorite workout ever.  It hurts!  My club runs this workout a few times throughout the year, but it never gets any easier because you're always supposed to run as hard as you can!  It's a great way to benchmark your current fitness level, determine pacing for workouts, and track your progress through the season.  But it hurts!

Fundraising update:

In the month of January, we raised $2,005 for FARA!  Woo hoo!

And last week I received the first anonymous donation.  Since I can't send him/her a proper thank you note, I'll give a big blog THANK YOU to anonymous!  I really appreciate the generous contribution.  And thank you to everyone out there for reading the blog, or making a donation to FARA, or both!  Your support is amazing and inspiring.

Guest blogger JPT

He probably needs no introduction since most of the blog readership knows JPT.  I would like to mention that my dad is one of the most generous people I know.  Guess who was the first to donate to this fundraiser?  He has always set the example of giving time and money to the things he believes are important.  I've been a lucky recipient of his generosity my entire life, and now I hope to pay a little something forward in 2011.

JPT at the wheel

As someone who knew Patti for her entire life, JPT can offer a lot more insight her experience with FA than I can.

Patti and her lop-eared rabbit

My sister Patti was born in 1952.  I was 8 years old.  I was the oldest; she was the youngest.  For the first few years she seemed to have no problem.  After a few years, slight issues with balance and gait began to emerge, almost imperceptible at first, then gradually more obvious.  Little was known about FA in those days, and the correct diagnosis took years.

My brothers and I naturally asked if we would get FA, and we were told that it was caused by a mutation and the odds against our being affected were astronomical.

As Patti’s condition deteriorated, our family moved into a house where she could live on one floor, where the local high school was built with one floor, and where she could have animals.  Her horse, Badger, would give her the mobility her legs lacked.  She enjoyed the ducks in the pond, the peacocks and pygmy goats in the yard, and showed lop-eared rabbits.  The family car sported a bumper sticker “Ask me about pygmy goats.”

Garrett and a pygmy goat

She was eventually able to live on her own with the help of aides in an apartment on the Fenway sponsored by the Boston Center for Independent Living.  Whenever we visited her, she was happy to see us come and sad to see us leave.  Eventually we were not able to communicate.  She died at 37.

Patti, baby Garrett, and another rabbit

While today there is still no cure or treatment for FA (research sponsored by FARA is making progress toward those goals), today there is a genetic test to determine whether an individual is a carrier of the genetic defect that causes FA.  Statistically speaking, 25% of children of two parents who are both carriers will have FA.  I have been tested, as have my two children.  Armed with this information, passing of FA from one generation to the next, as happened in our family, can be prevented.

Two generations of Timbies in overalls

Marathon training, week 3

My morning run view from the levy trails off Baylands park (see note below)

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count;

everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

                                                                 ~ Albert Einstein

I do believe it's important to have a training plan and to keep track of my progress, but there's a lot of wisdom in the quote above.  That Einstein was a smart guy!  Especially in the early part of the season, the mile splits aren't nearly as important to me as the time spent on my feet.  And in my opinion, enjoying the process and having fun with my training partners counts for a lot!
 
Last week I ran 32 miles as follows:

Tuesday - 7 miles on the track with TRIbe under the full moon
                warm up, drills, stadiums/lunges, strides
                1600, 1200, 800, 400m descending from 10k pace to sub-5k pace
                cool down, squats, core
Thursday - 7 miles on trails (Baylands) plus drills and strides
Friday - 4 miles jogging on trails (Baylands)
Sunday - 14 miles in the hills with run-buddy AGA (Rancho San Antonio)
 

Post-run glamor shot with AGA

Sunshine and good company make everything better, especially long, hilly runs.  Thanks AGA!  Garmin data from our girl-talk session is here.

Coming Friday - a guest blogger!  In case you're getting sick of me, me, me all the time.

Editor's note: Baylands really is beautiful, but often smells like garbage due to its proximity to the Sunnyvale Recycling Center.  And a coworker was attacked by some angry trail geese, but so far they've left me alone.

Friendly geese?

What is FARA?

A FARA family: Cousins R, J, N, Garrett, AT, and little CMT

Yes, CMT and I are wearing matching outfits!  Our mom made them!

The Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to curing Friedreich’s ataxia.  FARA was founded in 1998 by a group of patient families and prominent FA scientists.  Before joining FARA, co-founder and President, Ron Bartek, actually worked in government with my dad in the 80's.  They both served on the US delegation to the INF Treaty talks, never realizing they shared a family connection to FA.  Proof that this really is a small world!

FARA's mission is to provide the resources required to cure FA by funding research, increasing public awareness, and bringing together scientists, patients, clinicians, government agencies, and private companies.  FARA activities include:

• Fund-raising! Go Team FARA!
• Grant-making to support translational and clinical research that can turn scientific discoveries into therapies for patients.
• Managing an FA patient registry and a network for clinical trials.
• Fostering partnerships and information sharing between, and within, the scientific community and pharmaceutical companies.

Advances in the understanding and treatment of FA can also lead to progress in the fight against other diseases such as muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's.  A former NIH director sited FARA-sponsored work as a good example of the research "ripple effect" in the following quote from his testimony before Congress:

"The story of Friedreich's ataxia illustrates how many areas of clinical and basic research can come together in unexpected ways. In this rare disorder, research involving neuroscience, genetics, clinical medicine, molecular biology, and even biology of yeast and bacteria are converging. The findings offer insights to basic biology and to many other disorders, and illustrate the importance of understanding the mechanism of disease in order to devise treatments."

You can learn a whole lot more about FARA here.

And you can help fund their efforts here.

Marathon training, week 2

I haven't completely abandoned swimming and biking, but they aren't my training focus for the next 13 weeks and they won't be the focus of the weekly updates.  The non-triathlete readership can probably only take so many workout recaps!

TRIbe track in the dark

Tuesday night track workouts with my triathlon club started this week.  I have a love/hate relationship with track.  I generally prefer to workout in the morning because 6pm is not a high energy time of day for me.  When I'm sitting at my desk at the end of the work day, reading through the workout our coach has planned, I barely feel motivated enough to change into my running clothes.  Much less bust out some fast miles!  But I'm accountable to the Tuesday crew that I've been running with for years, and I'm always glad that I went (especially once it's over).

Last week I ran 29 miles as follows:

Tuesday - 7 miles on the track with TRIbe 
                 warm up, balance and strength exercises, drills, strides
                 2 x 2K - alternating 400m moderate pace / 400m 5K race pace 
                 cool down, lunges and squats, stretching
Thursday - 7 miles on trails (Baylands) plus drills and strides
Friday - 3 slow miles on trails (Baylands)
Sunday - 12 miles in the hills (Rancho San Antonio Park)

The gory details from my Garmin are here.

Timbies post-Turkey Trot, 2010

Track was a wake-up call for my body!  I've been running consistently, but Tuesday was the first time I've tried to move at a faster-than-comfortable pace since the Turkey Trot 10K on Thanksgiving.  And that was just to work up an appetite for this:

Timbie turkey, 2010

There was a request for more pictures of food on the blog.  Enjoy! 

The backstory, part 2

Last Friday we met my aunt Patti in part 1 of the fund-raising backstory.  Today I'll introduce my cousin Garrett, the oldest son of my dad's youngest brother.

AT, CMT, Garrett, and Cousin J at the Liberty Bell

Garrett was born happy and healthy, but by the age of five he was developing scoliosis and having trouble walking.  The early similarities to Patti's condition were obvious, but it wasn't until 1997, when a genetic test for Friedreich's ataxia became available, that the diagnosis was confirmed.  The gene for FA is recessive, meaning both parents must be carriers to have a symptomatic child.  It is remarkable that two sets of carriers, my grandparents and Garrett's parents, found each other in successive generations.



P (college buddy/FARA super-fundraiser) and Garrett

Garrett was using a wheelchair full time when he enrolled at the University of Illinois.  With an electric chair, an accessible campus, and a strong rehab program, Garrett enjoyed the same independence that all college kids crave.  As his symptoms progressed his teachers wore FM transmitters so he could hear the lecture, he used note takers during class and dictated his homework assignments.  When it became impossible to pursue computer science, his main academic interest, he switched majors and earned a degree in Finance.  Garrett always found a way to achieve his goals through technology, ingenuity, or shear brute force.

 

Watching the Phillies beat the Nationals in D.C.

Garrett loves sports!  He continues to follow U of I football and go to games when the Illini play Penn State.  He also cheers for the Philadelphia Eagles and his true love, the Phillies.  Their ball park is short commute from his apartment and when he could no longer see the field, his family worked out a series of hand signals to provide the play-by-play.  The roar of the crowd is also a sure sign that something good just happened!

Cousin J and Garrett at an Ataxia Ride, October 2010

I'm not sure how much Garrett knows about this fund-raiser.  I spoke with his parents before I began, and I'm sure they tried to tell him, but his advanced speech, hearing, and vision loss make it almost impossible to communicate.  No one understands the current lack of treatment options for FA patients better than Garrett.  But he firmly believes that the research efforts FARA supports will find a cure for Friedreich's ataxia.  Soon.

Actual marathon training!

I spent the last week detoxing from the holidays and too many pretzels and beers in Germany.  After Christmas I traveled to Karlstadt, a gingerbread house town in Bavaria, for the wedding of dear friends J and J on New Year's Eve.  Dancing until 4am must have some training benefit, right?  It certainly made me tired!   But so did sitting on airplanes for hours and hours.

The happy couple

Schnitzel and potatoes - fuel of champions

Everyone needs a break from training once and while (even me), but it sure felt good to MOVE again!  Last week I swam with my Masters team, rode my bike outside in the sunshine for the first time in a long while, and even made it to a yoga class.  Hot yoga on a cold winter evening is awesome!  And I ran 24 miles as follows:

Tuesday - 7 miles on the roads (Mountain View) plus drills and strides
Thursday - 7 miles on trails (Baylands) plus drills and strides
Sunday - 10 miles on trails (Rancho San Antonio Park)

Technology geeks (Dad!) can check out the Sunday run data from my Garmin here.

I didn't even cover a marathon's worth of distance in a week!  I guess I have a ways to go, fitness-wise, before Patriots Day.

It's on!

Preparing to run a marathon is long process.  And so is fund-raising to find a cure for Friedreich's ataxia.  My intent in keeping this blog is for you, the reader, to be a part of the journey.  And if you are able to make a donation to FARA, that you understand how their work benefits families like mine.

Danke!

The backstory, part 1

Friedreich's ataxia is a degenerative neuro-muscular disorder.  FA patients have a gene mutation that limits the production of a protein required for energy production in the body's cells.  Symptoms include the loss of arm and leg coordination (ataxia), vision impairment, hearing loss, slurred speech, scoliosis, and heart conditions. There are currently no treatments for FA, only symptom management.

While many have never heard of Friedreich's ataxia, about one in 50,000 people in the United States have FA. The two Friedreich's patients I've known are my aunt Patti and my cousin Garrett.  Today I'll introduce my dad's sister, Patti Timbie.

Patti and AT at Christmas, 1980

I grew up wildly jealous that Patti got to have horses in her backyard!  This was my childhood dream.  Patti loved all animals, and riding horses was a form of therapy and mobility for her as walking became difficult and finally impossible.  My grandparents moved to Hamilton, Massachusetts when Patti was a teenager to have room for the horses, and her dogs, cats, pigmy goats, rabbits, ducks, and roosters.

Patti serving dinner in Hamilton, 1968

Patti passed away when I was in elementary school.  I can remember going to visit her in Boston with my grandmother and step-grandfather, John.  By then Patti couldn't speak, but she could see well enough to use a computer that slowly scrolled through a large alphabet.  When the letter she wanted came up, she would select it by tapping a mechanical arm with her head, and slowly spell out what she wanted to say.  And she could hear me respond if I came very close and spoke VERY loudly into her ear.  This was hard work for young AT, but John said Patti really liked seeing my sister and I.  And I believed him because really I liked John. 

AT and CMT visiting Grandma T and John, 1987.  Bunny-ears cracked us up.

While the body deteriorates, the mental capabilities of Friedreich's patients remain completely unaffected.  By the time I met Patti, her symptoms had progressed to a point where I could never really get to know her.

Next week, the backstory part 2, Garrett.

And so it begins.

Hello world!

I've finished three Ironmans, four marathons, and a whole lot of triathlons and running races, but this is my first attempt at blogging!  And fund-raising!  I'm running the Boston Marathon for the second time in April, and this year I'm raising money for the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance as a member of Team FARA.  Over the next 16 weeks I'll post regular training updates as well as some more information about FA and my family experience with this disease.  I've recruited some guest bloggers (Timbies) to help me share our story. 

Timbies at the finish line in Boston in 2010

I invite you to follow along with my race preparations and fund-raising efforts.  You can learn more about FARA (and consider donating!) through the links on this site.

Thanks for visiting.  Lots more to come...