First things first. There are a few generous donors, who I have yet to notice. Thank you to your continued support, even beyond my fundraising goal. Thanks to you, I have managed to raise just shy of $3,000 for The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America!! Your generous contributions will help us find better treatments or cures for inflammatory bowel disease.
Donor honor roll (since 11.6):
- Doreen Ableman
- B. K. Holzem Enterprises
- Karen Teasdale
If you haven't yet,
you can still donate through my page. It would be great to actually exceed the $3,000 mark.
Race day tomorrow (12.2)!
I am in the fabulous city of Las Vegas, and the race is tomorrow starting at 4:30 pm (Pacific time)!! It should be a good run for me because things have been much better lately (not being anemic makes a world of difference for running endurance, not surprisingly). I am hoping to complete the run in about 2:00. Wish me luck! If you would like to check out the course, here is the
map. Pretty much the whole course is along the strip. My race number is 10580, but it does not seem that I can be tracked for free. Hopefully, the times will be freely available after the race though.
Team Challenge is Everywhere
Now there are going to be a lot of people participating in the marathon or 1/2 marathon tomorrow who are not part of the CCFA Team Challenge, but there quite a few Team Challenge participants as well. I have heard that there are ~1,000 Team Challenge participants for this race, and everywhere I seem to look, I see someone sporting his/her Team Challenge gear. It is very encouraging to know there are so many people working toward the same mission.
So for fun, I want to break down the participation in this race into some numbers/impact for the CCFA. Fundraising minimums probably vary to some extent, depending on where people are coming from, but for this race, every Team Challenge participant should have had to raise at least $2,700 (because airfare is not included at this level). So if I just estimate that each of those 1,000 runners/walkers raised the minimum, that is $2.7 million raised. Since the CCFA is an "A" rated charity, and 82 cents of every dollar actually goes toward research and patient care, that is over $2.2 million toward improving the lives of patients with Crohn's or colitis! And this is just a conservative estimate, since most people will have raised well more than the minimum amount. Now, this is awesome because this is the kind of effort that it will take to combat these illnesses.
Also remember, the raffle drawing will take place after I get back on Tuesday (12.4)!
