This photo was the one used in The Easton Journal and is my claim to fame. The one in the red is Nick Wade, who is currently running for Cornell and was all-state champion multiple times. The one in the green is Ryan Collins who currently runs for Virginia and runs sub-14 for a 5k and is an All-American in Cross Country.

Hello everyone, it's been another solid week of training.  Fundraising has slowed slightly but that is expected after the wild first month we had.

I'll start this post by discussing the training.  My coach, Tim Cattoggio, and I have been discussing the final three week stretch and I am getting more and more pumped.  The beginning of this week started with a few recovery runs from the 23-miler hard effort last Sunday.  I also incorporated running twice a few days this week just to shakeout the legs.  I did a fairly easy workout on Thursday which was 15 x 1:00 minute on/1:00 minute off. 

I didn't do a long run this week but did a solid 21-mile workout yesterday.  I did a 3 mile warmup and 4.5 mile cooldown, with what was supposed to be a half-marathon (13.1 miles) time trial in the middle.  I ended up doing 13.6 miles in 1 hours, 20 minutes, 30 seconds (~1:17:30 for half-marathon, 5:55/mile pace).  I was actually kind of surprised by this because I just wanted to be around 6:10/mile.  However, I started hitting 6:00/mile from the beginning and felt real smooth.  I held it through ~10 miles and then picked it up to about 5:30-5:40/mile pace for the last few.  I didn't really have to strain until the last few minutes.  This workout is a good indicator for the marathon.

This weekend I will be running the Martha's Vineyard 20-miler.  I'm not going to be racing this but am just looking to get into a race and experience a long race atmosphere.  I will likely take 10 miles of this at goal marathon pace.

Even bigger news is that we finally met some of CCFA Team New England.  Myself, committee member Brian Teague, and his cousin, Marc Emma went to the Kickoff Party.  Everyone was very nice and I'm excited to be a part of this team.  We also met director, Craig Comins and Alison Rosenfeld.  We discussed how our fundraiser was doing very good and ways to continue the incredible effort.  They were very nice and excited by our performance as we currently are the leading fundraiser.  It sounds like a few committee members are now interested in running the half-marathon in Virginia in June.  Craig and Alison mentioned that we will definitely be recognized nationally at this meeting.  They also told us the all-time highest fundraising group which was $100,000.  Although this seems unrealistic we are going to try and strive for it.

Thank you everyone for being part of this effort which will likely be amongst the best in the nation.  Continue to spread the word about our fundraiser.  Also, the L O C O event on March 22nd is in the works of being finalized so be sure to purchase a ticket for what will be an incredible event. 

While the link isn't up yet, their was an article in the Easton Journal this past week called "Meet the Marathoner: Jake Marcus."  Be sure to check it out. 

Thank you everyone!