My Messy Month+ - The Aftermath, Old Dominion Preview, and Badwater 2012

A few things:

1. Since the Palmetto 200 Relay, when life started going haywire, I've been remiss in recounting weekly mileage here.  So, in brief, here's how that's been:

Week of 8 April: 88 miles

Week of 15 April: 63 miles

Week of 22 April: 21 miles

Week of 29 April: 113 miles

Week of 6 May: 107 miles

Week of 13 May: 30 miles

Week of 20 May: 89 miles

Week of 27 May (projected): 133 miles

Which, if my count is correct, makes 2,053 miles since 1 January 2012, over 22 weeks, for an average of 93.3 miles per week, or about 13.3 miles per day.  Not bad for not quite half the year, especially with a few "down" weeks thrown in there.

2. My projected mileage for this week includes the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, which starts this Saturday (June 2nd) at 0400 at the Shenandoah County Fairgrounds in Woodstock, Virginia.  This will be my third run at Old Dominion - I ran it last June (http://tokenrunningblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/week-in-review-29-may-4-june-and-old.html), and in 2008, before I carried on about such things in my blog (in retrospect, I wish I had written about it then, because it was a down-to-the-wire race to go sub-24-hours and get the silver buckle, but oh well, story for another day). 

3. If Old Dominion goes well, I'll be making the long drive up to Bel Air for the Bel Air Town Run 5K on Sunday (June 3rd, starting at 8 a.m.), to keep my completion streak alive.  If I make it there and finish this year, that will be 17 consecutive finishes at the Bel Air Town Run, my longest completion streak for a single race, and a streak that's now becoming respectably significant in general.

4. And in the realm of wacky antics, let's not forget that Badwater is now just a little over 6 weeks away.  I'm excited for the race, but it's been off my immediate radar for a while (and everybody else's, too, it seems), so here's the reminder that I'm fundraising for the Challenged Athletes Fund again.  This charity provides equipment to people with physical disabilities to enable them to participate in physical activities.  Considering how good running has been to me, in so many ways, I'm excited to support a charity that allows others with the desire to be physically active, but the misfortune to make physical activity very difficult, to be able to have this important form of physical expression and emotional outlet.

So, in that spirit, if you'd like to donate a few bucks to this charity in honor of my run at Badwater, you can do so by following this link:

http://adventurecorps2012.kintera.org/davidploskonka

And, as a little "thank-you" to everybody who donates, this year, at Badwater, I will wear a shirt with all of the names of the people who donated to CAF written on it in Sharpie, since y'all are the ones that really enable and inspire my running antics. 

For an example of my skill with a Sharpie, see below:

In honor of Saint Patrick's Day 2012, which lasted for two full weeks in Baltimore.

The shirt that I wear for Badwater probably won't say anything about Saint Patrick's Day on it.

I'll scale the names according to the donation amount, with the smallest donation being the base scale unit.  So if you donate $20, maybe the letters will be about an inch high.  If you donate $2000, maybe the letters will be about as big as they are on the shirt above (unless you have a really long name, in which case I'll have to modify the algorithm to account for that).

So if you decide to donate, send me an email and let me know your name (or nickname, or whatever you want me to write on the shirt for you), donation amount, and what color Sharpie you would like me to use for you.  Thanks!