Week 10 Summary...iHope Business Sponsorship Campaign

Week 10 was a great week of training for me.  Monday morning I woke up and weighed in and was frustrated by another week of not losing weight.  It killed my motivation and I took the entire day off of training and went to bed early.  The day off had me feeling like Superman for the majority of the rest of the week.  Tuesday was my highest single-day training time of the year with 12.5 miles running, 25 miles biking, 2,400 yards swimming, and class at Barre563 to go along with pull-ups, push-ups, core, lunges, plyometrics, and jump rope.  The day totaled about 4 hrs. 50 minutes.  Friday was another HUGE day of nearly 5 hours with 2,900 yards swimming, 66 mile outdoor bike ride, and 6 miles running with some 1 minute hard intervals to go along with core work.  My best workout of the week was Wednesday which was a big confidence boost after the big day Tuesday.  I warmed up 30 minutes on the bike indoors and rode 3x10 minutes with the trainer set at 270-280 watts and after each 10 minute period I jumped straight to the treadmill for a fast mile and went 5:40, 5:35, and 5:30 respectively.  This workout really simulates the feeling of transitioning to the run on race day in a sprint or Olympic distance triathlon.  10 minutes at that effort on the bike was enough to make my legs wobbly when I started the run but after the first mile they seemed to remember how to do this sort of thing and I felt better with each one.  The bike segments were very challenging.  I'm not sure why but it seems getting the wattage high on the trainer is more difficult than the open roads which others have confirmed to me to be the case.  Sunday I ran 13 miles for the 2nd straight week and my weekly totals were 5,300 yards swimming, 150 miles biking, and 56 miles running.  It was my highest run week yet and I was happy to do it on 6 days of running.  The bike mileage wasn't high but I did that on 4 days of riding. 

This week is the kick off to the 2014 iHope fundraising campaign. 
The mission of the iHope Foundation is to provide low-income students in our community who display outstanding character and work traits with technology (such as an iPad) and scholarship money for post-secondary education that will aid in academic achievement and success. 

As part of helping the foundation grow I rely on support from businesses to sponsor me by making a contribution to iHope in lieu of supporting me personally.  Like last year I will recognize businesses that contribute in various ways.  In 2013 I had 10 businesses that sponsored me by making iHope contributions.  My goal is to increase that number to 15 or more this year.  It will be challenging.  I have begun dropping off letters telling about the iHope Foundation and including a sponsorship level proposal.  The picture below can be enlarged if you click on it.  For various levels of iHope support I will post business links and logos on the website, make sticker logos to go on my race helmet or disc wheel, add a business logo to my race jersey, or even do 12 weeks of personalized coaching towards a fitness goal. 

 

The iHope Foundation was created just over 1 year ago and I have been absolutely blown away but the support it has received.  We originally did not have the scholarship component but with the support from year 1 we were able to add this component so every student that receives an iPad will also receive a scholarship of $1,000.00 for post-secondary education provided they meet various academic, citizenship, and attendance standards through high school.  It really ties the mission together by no only building confidence and helping them with school by providing an iPad but also making college a real option and giving them something to think about they may have previously not had.  To date we have awarded 4 students with iPads and scholarships and we met last week to discuss awarding 1 or possibly even 2 more yet this year.  The students must be nominated by teachers, before having the foundation board assess the need, character, and work habits.  Once the list is narrowed down teachers submit recommendations and students are selected from those. 

 

If you know of a business that you think would consider sponsoring me for the 2014 race season by contributing to the iHope Foundation please e-mail me and I will get them the necessary information.  Any amounts make a huge difference to a small foundation such as iHope.  All contributions are tax deductible and contributions made towards the scholarship component also qualify for the 25% Endow Iowa tax credit which is pretty awesome because the contributor will make a big difference to iHope and will get 25% of the contribution back as a tax credit in addition to the federal deduction.  For me last year that meant about 1/2 of what I contributed came back at tax time. 

 

We also rely heavily on individual contributions to make this happen.  If you would like to contribute to the iPad portion of the iHope Foundation you can click here.  If you would like to make a contribution to the scholarship portion (Iowa donors earn the 25% credit on this part) click here.  Thanks for making a difference...if you don't believe me check out the note one of the iHope recipients left for us below (click to enlarge).  HUGE thanks to Dan Westbay, Robert White, and Jason Rangel for recent contributions!! 

 

Thanks for reading!!  DREAM BIG!