I need your help to INSPIRE!

In a bit of a deviation from my usual blabber, tonight's post has a new and very important topic.  My wonderful school full of students and their (and my) desperate need for some new materials. For some quick background information, I teach math, all students grade 1-5, at an elementary school in an urban city just outside of Boston.  My school is old and we are missing a lot of new technology.  Most noticeably, we have no library, just some bookshelves in the hallway on each of the three floors.  Without a library, it's hard to keep these books organized and even harder to find books that are relative to the subject matter.  In an ideal world, I'd be a millionaire.  In the real world, I'm not even close.  This poses a problem most often when there are supplies I want to give my students, but lack the means to acquire the supplies.  Last year I noticed a major drop in mathematical literature for students above grade 2.  There are lots of books at the school about counting, sequencing, and ordering numbers.  Past those basic skills though, there is little to nothing.  I desperately want to give my older students new fictional, math centered stories.  Plenty of these books exist, the problem is getting them into the hands of those who need them.  Some of my favorite math centered books include the Sir Cumference stories and the other math adventure series.  Unfortunately, these books come at a price, and when added up, it becomes more than I can support on my own.
So, this is where your help become necessary.  I've set up a donorschoose project focused around fictional math literature for older students.  My project also includes a video recorder so that the students can practice, explain, and record math strategies, using the books, to show to other students.  You will also see a request for bins, necessary to store the books in a central location and provide an easy way to keep track of what is being used at the moment.  Donating money is a lot to ask, I know this.  But if you can't donate, there are other ways you can help.  One of the simplest ways is to share this blog post or my project link.  If enough people share, I am confident it will reach people that would be able to donate.  Remember, no donation is too small.  Even $1 will push the project along.  In fact, if you donate this week, and enter the code INSPIRE at the payment screen, donorschoose will even match your donation.  This code expires on August 26, but the project will be open until it is fully funded or until December, whichever comes first.
If you read this blog, please take a moment to share or donate, and help these students have a future in math!  Here's the link to my project, just click and go.  Flipping for math
Thank you!

The first Sir Cumference story

And 9 more to go

Sunday marked the beginning of a new week and a new record.  I ran 17 very long miles and if you don't think that's far, well, to me, it was never ending.  I think it was a combination of not running the long run last week and having a head cold.  The first 8 miles were going well, right at the pace we usually go, chatting, the regular running routine.  I was really holding out until mile 8 before I ate any gummi bears, because I didn't want to get too used to them too early.  Along with the gummies, I brought a belvita soft cookie, which proved to be fairly hard to eat, while I was literally on the run.  Since we were running low on water, we stopped to refill our bottles, and I'm pretty sure that's when everything became an issue.  I managed to push through miles 9 and 10 fairly well, didn't loose too much speed.  But suddenly at mile 12, I hit it.  Call it whatever you want, the wall, the blerch, exhaustion, whatever, but I hit it hard.  Suddenly those last 5 miles seemed to stretch on forever.  I fell back from the two I was running with and dropped my pace down to around an 11/11:30 minute mile.  Considering we've been training at around a 10, that's a big drop.  Especially since I made 15 just two weeks ago, coming in at an average of 10:14.  We stopped again for waters at mile 15, and by then I was seriously contemplating just walking the last two miles.  Everything hurt, more than it usually does.  My legs were burning from the toes to the hips. I did end up walking for a minute between more than a few miles overall, which is something I normally try hard to avoid.  Needless to say, I had the worst run I've had in a long time.  It was one of those runs that challenges everything you think about wanting to run a marathon and makes you seriously consider giving up.  Even with the encouragement from my running partners and later from Ryan, I was pretty doubtful that I wanted to keep this up.  But, as a new day dawned and I spent 6 hours sitting in a professional development on writing, I knew I had to keep going.  There's only 69 days left before the marathon.  If I can make it through these last days and finish that marathon, I'll never have to worry about it again, unless I want to.  If I give up now, I'll always have that in the back of my mind.  What kind of example would I be setting for my students, if I was telling them to never quit when I had done just that?  So, next weekend, I'll be back out there, doing a shorter long run, and the weekend after that, I'll be out there doing 20 miles.  And once you get through 20, what's 6.2 more really?

Here's my splits and overall from yesterday. If you go and check out my connect, let me explain something real quick. The 14 something split is from when we actually stopped to wait for someone to get the water, instead of jogging on, like we did for the first water break.  When I said I slowed down to an 11 something pace, I wasn't kidding.  But to me, the 11 pace felt like a 15.  That shows how bad it really was.

Summer colds

The temperature has been fluctuating a bit this past week and I think it's messing with my immune system.  I either have a head cold or a massive explosion of new allergies.  Whatever it is, it definitely doesn't feel good and really makes it hard to run or workout at all.  This week was a pretty bad week for running in general.  I went 6 miles on Monday since we skipped the long run.  Then Tuesday I went to boxing.  That was actually fairly easy.  I must have been having a great day, or at least, I drank a lot of water.  Really, I was breezing through class on Tuesday afternoon.  Then Wednesday hit and we had a goodbye party for the girls we've been tutoring all summer.  During that party, I may or may not, but definitely did, eat two donuts.  Not two in a row, I spread them out over two hours.  That counts for something right?  Needless to say, Wednesday night I was NOT feeling the run in the woods.  Miraculously, the run ended up only being 4.3 instead of the 5 I thought it was going to be.  Really, the .7 didn't make a huge difference, but I'll take what I can get when I don't feel like running.  The trail was kind of a pain, lots of rocks, trees, and single file paths.  This was an off-the-trail run, which is always harder than the main hiking trails.  I think I finished at about 48 minutes.   So not impressive.  Of course we had our after run margs and one of the girls brought a 3 lb bag of gummi bears.  Now is a good time to tell you, if I haven't already, that Haribo gummi bears are my weakness. I would probably have eaten the entire 3 lb bag if I was alone.  Seriously, they're so much better than any other type of gummi bear.  So I suppose I can consider it a win that I went home with the whole bag.  And a lose, because I will probably proceed to eat the whole bag.  I intend to use them mostly for energy bursts during our 18 miler on Sunday, but I'm pretty sure they'll be snacked on frequently as well.
So, now that tutoring is over there's two more weeks of vacation left.  Most people would probably celebrate this.  I am not, because next week I have professional development all week, from 8 - 2.  Seriously, this has been the busiest vacation I've ever had.  At least I'll have the week before school starts to get in all my vacationing.  And all my boxing.  I have been having a great time boxing, I really enjoy the classes.  I did kickboxing the other day, and I think I like the regular boxing, at least for now.  I'm worried about hurting my legs before the marathon. Anyways, I hpoe this cold goes away before Sunday.  Otherwise, those 18 miles might be the worst I've ever run.

This is from last week, not the one I just wrote about above.  Clearly I had more energy at the end of that race.  

Ouch

Two of my friends joined a boxing club at the beginning of the month.  One of the enticements to get people to join this club is that you get your first shot free.  So yesterday I joined the two of them for their 9 am boxing class.  It was awesome, overall.  The class was an hour long, which included the warm-up, the boxing, ab work, and the cool down.  I had a good time and I really enjoyed punching the bag.  Yes, if you're wondering, I did join, and I plan to head there tomorrow for another round of boxing.  They also offer kickboxing, which I think we may be doing later in the week.
There's only one downside to all of this.  Every single muscle in my body aches today.   This isn't just a running ache, where your legs hurt, but you can manage.  This is legs, abs, arms, chest, and back muscles.  If there's a muscle in my body, it's aching.  But I had to go for a run today, since I didn't do a long run this weekend.  In fact, I haven't gone since Wednesday last, I believe.  So, after suffering through a torturous day of aches and pains, I decided to suck it up and go for a shorter run.  6.2 miles, because I figured it would be like running the last 6.2 of the marathon.  Really, it gave me a small idea of what it's going to be like, running on legs that feel like they're about to give out and having every muscle ache.  I'm sure it was a worthwhile experience.  The only problem, now that everything is done, is moving.  It hurts to stand, to sit, to walk up or down stairs.  I can't even sit up from a half-way lounging position without a struggle.  It's really a huge issue because I have laundry to do and I have to go down to the basement to put it in the dryer.  Everything hurts and it's torture.  So, why not do it again tomorrow?

Past the half-way mark

Yesterday morning we did our long run.  Our schedule called for 15 miles, which means I have officially made it past the half-way mark!  Last week was 13.1, exactly half-way, so this is the big time now.  It sort of feels like 11 more will be nothing, but at the same time, seems like I can never take another single step after 15.  So, we'll see how that goes.  Last week I also ran 26 miles over the course of 6 days.  Actually, I ran over 26 miles, but not enough to really add it on.
As for the actual marathon, I think the biggest challenge is going to be staying fueled.  On the run yesterday I ate breakfast beforehand, a coffee and belvita.  That's my basic breakfast before every run, so I see no need to change it now.  Usually I can make it at least 6 before starting to feel like I'm slowing down or running low on energy, and yesterday was no different.  It's the next set of miles that always seem to be longer, less fun, more torturous, and I think it's due to the lack of incoming fuel.  I had some gummy bears and some sports beans, but they really don't cut it.  For longer runs, I think I need actual food sources, maybe granola bars or similar.   The thing is, I'm no really sure what to eat and I have no way to carry it with me either.  It's hard enough trying to drink water or eat gummy bears while running, so I can't imagine trying to eat a full granola bar or snack in the middle of a run.  But, I know I have to figure something out, because I need something more for the last miles.  Especially if I have 11 more to go.  I know the marathon itself will have snack stops, but I want to be used to eating light snacks in the middle of a run before I try it for the actual marathon. I think I have some research to do.
In completely unrelated news, we've had an old RCA Victor Victrola stereo sitting in our house since we moved in last year.  It belongs to my father, so we've just kind of been using it as a really large shelf.  This past weekend though I decided to find out if the record player portion actually worked.  Turns out, it does.  So I went back home and got some records and now it's like 1970 all over again in this house.  Here's a photo of some of the records I took, and a link to my Garmin connect for my 15 mile run.

                      
Oh yea, my watch starting telling me my battery was really low at mile 14, so I picked up some speed just to be sure I could finish before the watch died.   Good incentive actually, it brought my pace back up to a 10 minute mile. Also, Adidas has a new shoe out, the Springblade.  They look amazing, but are way out of my price range.  So, if anyone from Adidas ever stumbles upon this blog, feel free to send a pair my way, 7.5 is fine.  I'd be more than happy to test them out and wear them around to all my races/training runs.  As you can see from previous blog entries, I'm a big Adidas fan, so it would totally be worth your time.