Team in Training Fuel Belts

Time to stock up on all your Fuel Belt products! Fuel Belt is an official product partner of Team in Training.

They have an exclusive TNT collection that is now available at specialty stores throughout the country. Fuel Belt will be donating 10% of all sales to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's cancer research fund. Besides fuel belts, they have wedge bike bags, messenger bags, and race number belts.

Click here for the TNT collection.

TnT has signed up to do TNT!

Took my cousin Terri and her husband Tony (they were TnT before I even heard of TNT) to the info meeting in Danville. Terri signed up for Nike Half and Tony signed up for Nike Full. I'm very excited for Terri as this will be her first endurance event and this will be Tony's second marathon. The info meeting was great because I got to see my old managers and old teammates from both run and cycle teams who are now either managers or mentors.

Since I was there, I sat in on the triathlon breakout group to hear what Head Coach Paul had to say about this upcoming season. A little background info on Coach Paul. He started out with TNT as a duathlon coach in 2001. He completed Ironman Canada in 2003 and Ironman Arizona in 2007. Coach Paul is a certified TNT Triathlon and USA Cycling Level 3 coach.

Coach Paul did reassure us that of all the years he has been coaching, he only had one person who did not complete an event. The poor girl had an accident on her bike and was unable to finish her event. It also sounds like the TRI is going to be a busy training schedule. He said the half ironman group can expect to do 10 hours of training a week. Oy!

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Fundraising thanks:
Thank you to Carol, Caroline, & Rita!

Oh No! the BIG 3-0!

My last bike ride as a 29-year old. With my riding crew having other plans, I decided to ride on my own this morning. I had not rode in 2 weeks and really needed to get out there since Grizzly Peak Century is next week. I toured around San Ramon, Danville, and Dublin for about a couple hours. It only got me 26 miles with 2 climbs. Anyways, it still bums me out that elite marathoners can finish 26.2 in 2 hours and I match that on my bike. Still there is a beauty of being on the bike that's different from riding in a car or running/walking outside. On a bike, you ride fast enough to go by, but you go slow enough to enjoy everything that surrounds you.

So tomorrow I turn 30. Where did all the years go? Anyways, I can't tell you what my birthday wish is...otherwise it won't come true. However, if you give this as a birthday present, it will benefit others, thereby someday making my birthday wish come true.

can I go back to 1984?

Be the First!

You are cordially invited
to make a
donation to

Phil's

2008 Summer Season
Team in Training Fundraising Efforts

benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

as he plans to tackle
Big Kahuna Triathlon

Sunday, the Seventh day of September
Two Thousand and Eight

Your donation will help save lives
and improve the quality of life of cancer patients and their families.

Feelin' Like Caca

The worse part of getting sick is not being able to exercise. However, I should be thankful that i'm able to recover quickly and miss only a week of training. Just thinking about my friend going through cancer and knowing she is not only missing months of training, but she's actually fighting for her life...has put things back to perspective.

So in celebration of life......as of tonight, i'm officially signed up to do the Big Kahuna Triathlon with Team in Training this summer season! I've been talking about it long enough and now i'm committed to doing the damn thing as well as raising $$$ for the cause! 37 more days till the journey starts again!

Wanna join in the fun? Save lives? Help me get socks? Here are the two featured events benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society this summer:

Swim Dork

Not quite as dorky as falling off my trainer, but this one comes a close second. I met up with Amy and Claudia for laps at the Aquatic center. For whatever reason I can't seem to swim straight on my back. I constantly hit the buoy barriers like a pinball machine. Each time causing me to stop. During the last drill set I got so frustrated, I stopped to talk to Claudia to vent. When I was done talking, I leaned back to continue swimming on my back and BAM! I hit my head on the back of the pool because I had already made it to the other side. Nothing serious. Just a bruised ego. Nah....I live for dorky moments like this. Anyways, I finished 1500 yds tonight in 50 minutes.

Want to see what other dorky things I can do next? If so, join me this Saturday at McAfee Coliseum for an afternoon ballgame! If it was anything like the last crazy tailgate party at the Coliseum, it will be a memorable time! This time a portion of tix sale proceeds benefits a great cause! Holla, if interested. GO A's!

Join The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) and the Oakland A's this Saturday, March 29th for Team In Training Camp Day, where the A's will take on the San Francisco Giants in a Spring Training game at the McAfee Coliseum. Don't miss this opportunity to root for your favorite home team in this rare pre-season match-up. Grab your peanuts and crackerjacks and come get a sneak peek at these Bay Area boys of summer before the regular season begins. Game starts at 12:35 p.m.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training program is a proud beneficiary of this special game day promotion brought to you by Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Seagate. A portion of ticket sales will advance LLS' mission to find cures for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life for patients and their families.

Click here to purchase tickets or visit www.oaklandathletics.com/teamintrainingcamp.

We'll see you at the game!

You Could Save a Life

You Could Save A LIFE!

A BONE MARROW DRIVE will be held on Sunday, March 9^th. You must be between the ages of 18 to 60 to register. The hardest part about registering as a donor is the 10 minute application, after that it only takes a simple cheek swab! For more information about registering to become a donor please visit www.marrow.org

The JOSHUA MALIGRO BONE MARROW DRIVE

will be held on

Sunday, March 9^th, 2008

Starting at 12 noon

@

Willey’s Bagels and Blends

390 West Country Club Drive

Brentwood, CA 94513

(on the corner of Balfour Road & W. Country Club, across from Heritage High School)

Joshua Maligro is a 12 year old Brentwood resident and 6^th grader at Adams Middle School. He is now fighting for his life for the second time in less than a year! Josh’s only chance of survival is to have a BONE MARROW or CORD BLOOD transplant. Josh is of Filipino and Caucasian decent and it may be difficult to find him a matched donor. Please keep in mind that typically a donor with the same background has a better chance of being a match but, not always! It could be anyone! If you would like to follow Josh’s journey you can visit:

www.caringbridge.org/visit/joshuamaligro


Josh and his dad

Josh spoke at our Cause for Celebration in January and thanked us for helping make a difference. At the time, he was in remission from AML. Now he needs all the help in the world to survive. Please spread the word around about the marrow drive. It's simple, harmless, and most importantly can save a life!

If You Haven't Had Cancer

At the send off party, we got a tag of pictures of all our team honorees and on the back was a copy of a writing piece by Travis Yon in 2005. When Travis wrote it, he was 12 years old celebrating six years of being leukemia free after a match was found through the National Marrow Donor Program. Just wanted to share his message.

If You Haven't Had Cancer
By Travis Yon

If you haven't had cancer, you don't know attention. You can't know attention. The constant questions and the feelings of being surrounded. The "Does this hurt?" and the "Can you feel that?" You are never alone. There is always someone watching you. Whether it's your doctor, nurse, mom, dad, brother, or sister, grandpa or grandma. You are always supervised. If you haven't had cancer you don't know attention.

If you haven't had cancer, you don't know medicine. There is no way you can know medicine. The continual injections, pills, swallowing, and IV's. The charts and keeping track. The discomfort and vomiting. The exhausting chemotherapy and radiation. The 75 medicines a day. If you haven't had cancer you can't know medicine.

If you haven't had cancer you don't know pain. You can't know pain. The injections, the radiation, and the chemotherapy. Pure torture. Fear. That is pain. It's the worst. If you haven't had cancer, you don't know pain.

If you haven't had cancer, you don't know long-term. You can't know long-term. The long, boring hours of just waiting. Doing nothing. Pathetically trying to brainstorm ways to amuse yourself. Waiting for it all to be over. Waiting for the results. It is grueling. If you haven't had cancer you don't know long-term.

If you haven't had cancer you don't know joy. You can't know joy. The joy of surviving, making it, you're done, sprung, released, out through. If you haven't had cancer you don't know joy.

Travis (right) cheering on his mom at mile 22
of the Honolulu Marathon in 2001

Cause For Celebration

Tonight was Cause For Celebration for the Winter Season. As a result, I had no time to do any training. Which is fine. Tomorrow was suppose to be a rest day so I guess i'll just swap. Some great info I learned tonight. Our cycle team has so far fundraised $43K. Mighty impressive when compared to the two East Bay Marathon teams which have a combined $100K or so. Not shabby considering the cycle team may be the smallest team of all the sports. Cross-country Ski took home top honors with something like $70k. Well, we are really just one BIG team and working towards the same goal. So as a collective group of all the sport teams in the Greater SF Bay Area Chapter, we have already banked $330K. That's enough to put 3 researchers at work for 3 years. By the end of the season, our chapter is looking to hit $1,000,000. I think that's reason to celebrate.

86%, Check!

Soooooo close to meeting my minimum fundraising goal! 14% left. Humungo THANKS to my awesome sponsors for helping me reach 86% so fast - quickest time yet from all my TNT seasons. You still like me! You really still like me! Ok, maybe it's because you really care about the cause. As well you should. You are making a big difference in lives. SF Bay Area Winter cycle team has raised a collective $33,000 thus far. Thanks to caring people like you!

Today I did upper body weights and did my normal situps. I also tried doing some core work as featured in this month's Runner's World for elite abs. I did some side planks and bird dogs. Weird sounding names, but I guess the stretches are suppose to help with lower-back muscles and strengthen the muscles along the spine, upper back, and glutes. We'll see how that goes.