Calculating, Experimenting and Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Here's a fun Friday idea, when you go to work tomorrow, at 9am sharp, stand outside the office door and have someone fire a cap gun, start swimming through your emails, wading through the things in your inbox, and keeping your head above water in the sea of voicemails. At 10am, get up, see if you can find your favorite ritual morning person to head over to Starbucks, but if you can't find them, go yourself anyway, you'll need the fuel to get through the rest of the day.

After getting enough coffee for your team, transition onto that deadline-based project that you and your co-workers have been working long, hard hours while getting everything to this point. Balance between leading the group and following their decisions, pedal slowly and steadily on the uphill battles and fly downhill with the success of any breakthroughs. For the first hour until 11am, keep the coffee coming. As the hours wear on, make sure you provide substantial nutrients to keep everyone focused and nourished - work through lunch if necessary, eating smaller tidbits of food at regular intervals rather than stopping and losing momentum with a big meal. Success will reach you by 3pm and you will realize that you still have plenty of time to transition to what is left of your own job responsibilities.

Hit the ground running! While this is the most familiar of your jobs, doing it after facing such a large and daunting task could leave you drained. If you're lucky, you'll be able to fly through this part of your day because you've done it many times before, you can zone out and just do your work well. By 6pm, you will be exhausted, but successful - you finished! As you leave the office, have your friends put up a big ribbon at the exit door that you can run through with your hands in the air as you successfully complete your day! Then go hit up happy hour!

You know, this may sound like a wacky exercise, but I've suddenly done the math and figured out that this half Ironman triathlon is going to take me potentially 9 hours! The amount of time you'll spend at work tomorrow! Think about that as you travel through your day. Could you imagine swimming for 1 hour, biking for up to 5 hours and running for up to 3 hours?

Just for fun... Bordering this entry, you'll find the maps here of the bike portion [left] and

the run portion [right - which also, if you look closely, shows the course we'll swim at the start]:

Triathlons obviously require a great deal of training. We've been in training since October, and still have 2 1/2 months til our event. The obvious reason is the conditioning that we must do to get our body to the

level to complete an event which could take a full work day. The other part is to experiment with things so that we learn what works for us and what doesn't. You don't want to do anything new on race day, you want to know what works best for you!

Some of the lessons I've learned so far are:

a) Don't eat a burrito 15 min. before you jump in the pool no matter how hungry you are.

b) Perpetuem drink mix is to be mixed with Gatorade or something, not straight up water - blech!

c) Perhaps sleeping the night before my Saturday Training rides is a better, more efficient use of my resources than staying up all night worrying about the ride.

d) I really do like riding my bike, I just don't like uphill rides because if I go too slowly, I fall over. If I fall over, I have to start again on an incline. If I try to start again on an incline, I fall over. Uphills = fall over.

e) I have to focus more when Triathlon training.

For running, it's a great thing to get in the zone and forget about what you're doing.

For swimming, if I get in the zone - or even think about the great form I see on the swimmer in the next lane, I forget what lap I'm on, and I'm too paranoid to guess so when in doubt, I add an extra lap. That adds up quickly!

For biking, if I get too caught up in the amazing view, or fantastic architecture on the homes in the neighborhoods we've been riding through, I may miss a car door opening in my path or a rock under my tire.

f) It's crazy to me that after a bike ride, my arms hurt more than my legs!

g) The body is an amazing thing and usually the obstacle isn't your physical ability, but your mind and its objections.

I find that the physical changes come easier than the mental ones. I'd always heard that to be in the best shape, do a tri. They hit all the problem spots - the saddle bags, the jiggly arms when you wave. I've been reunited with muscles that I thought I'd lost touch with forever and as a bonus they've brought along a few friends to join the party! I don't know why, but I still allow the mental tricks to have a voice in my head - I let them muddle up my focus. Things such as suddenly changing from "Carbs are bad" to "Make sure you eat enough carbs" =or= the fact that clothes are fitting a lot loser although the number on the scale hasn't dropped.

This has been a tough few weeks for me because I'm coming off a week and a half of not training a lot due to work, and having the kids off school for a week. I know too that me not having a road mid-week ride makes a huge difference in how far I've come compared to the rest. I know that missing a few crucial rides too, has me behind the pack on my weakest sport. I'm really looking forward to trying our first tri in a few weeks in Palm Springs which will be a flatter, shorter International distance, but I'm really getting freaked about the Wildflower weekend and "Beach Hill" - a deceptively tough 1 mile climb; "Nasty Grade" which tops out at "Heart Rate Hill" - complete with people to actually take your heart rate at the top.

This is the point where the end starts approaching at a much faster pace. Training is ramping up, my time is becoming scarce, how will I successfully fundraise the $ so that I can actually do the event, I'm trying to not spend all of my $ on babysitting, not to mention the guilt of missing their first baseball games is a huge thing. I start to wonder what the hell I was thinking.

On the Team, when we're down and people are struggling we take a moment to and reflect on why we're really here - the blood cancer patients and their families. Reminding ourselves of the bigger picture helps bring us back to reality and regain focus of why our training is so important.

Here are some lessons learned from our amazing honored teammates.

a) I chose this for myself, it didn't choose me - as cancer would.

b) My pain is temporary, and much easier than chemotheraphy

c) My first goal is not just to cross the finish line, but to fundraise $4,000 to provide valuable research to find a cure by 2015, to provide patient aid to current patients and their families in the form of education, support groups and financial aid. Plus, as a fundraiser, I'm also an advocate, helping spread the word on LLS and all that it's trying to achieve.

d) Yes, the economy sucks, people are losing jobs, houses. Let me tell you, it could always be worse - someone could tell you that on top of all of those challenges, you have cancer. In this lowered economy, donating $5 to blood cancer is money much better spent investment than treating ourselves to Starbucks, or movie rentals, or the drive-thru. Plus, the good feeling from a $5 donation lasts a lot longer than a 45 min. coffee, 2 hour movie, or 1 hour lunch out.

e) While I do have challenges to overcome in my training, I am training alongside honored teammates who not only have battled "Nasty Grade" but CANCER! Who am I to give up with such great role models beside me?

SO, in the spirit of calculating, experimenting and changing, I'm going to work on the mental battles for the next week and see if calming down, focusing and pressing on will work me through this rut. I truly try to learn something from everything that I do so there are lessons hidden in this when I just slow down enough to take the time to see them.

Please share my blog with anyone that you know who is considering doing a triathlon or joining Team In Training so that they can hear from someone firsthand. Share my blog with anyone battling blood cancers so that they know that there is an army fighting blood cancers on their behalf and that there are resources available to them. Share my blog with anyone looking to challenge themselves, better themselves, or give back.

To make a donation, no matter how big or small, please visit

http://pages.teamintraining.org/los/wildtri10/sharris

I'm trying to raise $4,000 by April 1st.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Think training for a Triathlon is tough? Try Chemotherapy!

Every 4 minutes, someone new is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

Every 10 minutes, an adult or child loses their battle with blood cancer.

Leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20.

Believe it or not, these statistics are much improved from the death sentence that blood cancers would have given you earlier in my lifetime. But, I believe we can do better.

Leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and myelodysplastic syndromes are diseases that can affect the bone marrow, the blood cells, the lymph nodes and other parts of the lymphatic system. An estimated 912,938 people in the United States alone are living with, or are in remission from, leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, NHL or myeloma.

I believe I mentioned it before, that when I first found Team In Training years ago, I had no personal tie to blood cancers. Back then, my only experience with big scary cancer was losing my amazing god-mother after her valiant fight with breast cancer, my beloved grandmother who battled several cancers before succumbing to lung cancer, and a young second cousin who endured a lot in his short life. But at that time, my naivety lumped all cancer together, just that it happened to land on a different body part. So when I found Team In Training, the signature fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), I believed that any progress made in relation to any cancer would help in the long scheme of things.

To learn more about Team In Training's 21-year or LLS' 60-year histories, click on www.teamintraining.org/firsttimehere/themissionandhistory/

We just kicked off another season for Team In Training, and as usual, the high-energy event was inspirational, motivational, and just nothing that I can describe. You just have to go to one, even if you aren't there to sign up. It's an amazing, humbling experience. This one in particular was especially moving because we had an honored teammate reception before the kickoff. Honored teammates are people from our communities that are either in treatment for or remission from blood cancers. Their stories will break your heart, give you hope, and amaze and inspire you all at the same time. Having so many honored teammates in one room was a beautiful occasion. However, we also recalled that for every honored teammate that was present, there were others that were in the hospital, too sick to attend, or who were absent since they had recently lost their battles.

Now as I mentioned, the statistics have improved in the recent past thanks to LLS's efforts to cure blood cancers and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

LEUKEMIA: The relative five-year survival rate for leukemia patients has nearly quadrupled since 1960.

LYMPHOMA: The relative five-year survival rate for Hodgkin Lymphoma patients more than doubled since 1960 to just over 86%. During that time the relative five-year survival rate for NHL patients rose as well from 31% to nearly 69%.

MYELOMA: Overall five-year survival has increased from 12% to 37% in the last 50 years.

While reading that there are 912,938 people in the US are living with a blood cancer, it's a bittersweet statistic. While the number of cases still keep going up, part of the high number means that people are surviving the disease so more people are living in remission, not dying because of blood cancers.

Since LLS was founded in 1949 they have invested more than $680 million in research for blood cancer, much of which takes place at local hospitals like USC, UCLA, City of Hope and Children's Hospitals. One amazing result of such research was the development of Gleevec which has changed some forms of blood cancer from a death sentence to a very manageable, livable disease. They also put money into patient services to provide free patient aid in the form of support groups, mentors for newly diagnosed patients, financial aid.

I believe in the Society's mission, in their vision to find a cure by 2015, and see the results of everything that they do in our community. I run, bike, and swim because I can. Please help find a cure, every $1 helps!