Recommitment & Shamrocks

Well, recommitment was last Friday.

I just found out today who of my mentees are left in the program. I lost 3, but those 3 aren't a surprise.

* Tonya dropped... due to being too far behind in her fundraising. She's also had a few work conflicts with our Saturday runs, so she's been doing the runs on her own. I think she'll be registering for Race for the Roses on her own and running it, just not with us. It's a shame the season didn't work out for her, she seems like a very nice person, and it would have been nice to get to know her better.

* Rebecca seems to have dropped... I'm thinking it's cause she wasn't getting anything out of TNT. She's done a 1/2 marathon before, she didn't need help training, and she clearly wasn't interested in getting to know anyone... so... yeah.

* Tami is an assumed drop. No one has seen her in months, she's done no fund-raising, for all we know she isn't even training.


This leaves 6. heh. out of my original 11. That's not a really good retention rate, is it? Eh. But Britteny and Val weren't really ever "in," so it's more like 6 from 9. That's atleast better. heh. I'll try not to dwell on it.

The good news is, of my 6 who are sticking with it.... all of them are done fund-raising. All of them have surpassed their minimums!! Some of them are still doing fund-raising activities, but it's just because they are amazing philanthropists. I'm left with 6 rock stars. It's kinda cool.

So, that's where the recommitment settled out to.

Coming up this next weekend is the Shamrock Run, and I'll admit to being a little nervous about it. 15K, or 9.32 miles is the course I'm registered for. My runs have been going really well over the past couple of weeks, but that's partly because I've been pacing my newbie runner mentees, Gabrielle and Amy. They aren't very fast, and it makes me feel amazingly in shape... so I never really have any trouble when I pace them, cause I'm not really pushing my limit. They ran the 8 mi run last weekend in a little less than 2 hours, a 14:22 minute mile pace (slower than my marathon pace). I'm hoping to be able to finish the Shamrock run in the same amount of time actually.

I'm a little miffed about the Shamrock Run tho. Part of the appeal was the free beer the runners get at the finish line... but that beer is only being served until 11am, and they aren't letting the 15K runners go until 8:40am. If it takes me 2 hours like I'm hoping, that gives me 15-20 minutes to find and drink my beer! Hmmm...

Also, I already know I'll be finishing AFTER the awards ceremony. If that's not a slap in the face, I dunno what is. Yeah, you're still competing, but we've given out all the ribbons. nice. The awards ceremony is scheduled for 10:15am.

Yes yes, I already know I'm not a contender for an award. I'm not a racer. The point is I'll be out running a 15K that most Portlanders will admit to not being in the shape to go out and do, and would flat out refuse to attempt it. That's cool. I'm automatically cool for running the 15K, and yet, "oh, you're still running? maybe we have some beer left for you..." seems to be the theme of the end of the Shamrock Run. Grrr...

eh, atleast I'll get a T-shirt out of it. I suppose one free beer isn't enough to whine over. heh.

In other news, the run team (lead by Captain Karl) is trying to get an online community going for our purposes. TNT run participants can make profiles, and we can host blogs, have discussions, post our fund-raising events for other people to see, etc. It's admittedly a little late for the Roses season (4 weeks left!!), but the other event participants can benefit from this. Karl told me it's so late cause, as he put it, "someone dropped the ball." He's none too pleased about this. I guess someone else volunteered to put this together, and then did nothing.

So Karl is fooling around with this free online community/project coordination website called fmyi. He put together a site, and invited some of us out there to fool around with it and give him feedback. Frankly, I think the site sucks. It's non-intuitive, and clearly geared more towards running a business than running a group like TNT. I mucked around with it, added some content to get a feel for the functionality, and wrote him feedback. I guess I'm really the only one to do this, as Karl called me up last night, and the two of us were messing around with the site trying to figure things out.

I showed him the stuff that bugged me, and told him the features that would serve us better that the site didn't provide. He's working with the fmyi creator on Thursday to go through my wish list and hopefully improve it. In the mean time Karl granted me administrative permissions to our site, and I can muck with it all I want now. hee!

I'll admit to having logged in a couple times since then... and muck-raking a touch.

Ok, yes, fmyi is kinda dumb, but I think it could be a valuable thing for our team to have our own online community. And, being treated special also massages my ego just enough to make me want to help out more. I butter-up nicely.


I'll let you know how the Shamrock Run goes this weekend!