Running 100 mile race for our local food bank + other great charities!

Hey everybody, just a quick update on my running. Some of you know I do these crazy ultra-marathons (stll a newbie at them though)... well, I'm doing the Mohican 100 Mile Trail Run in mid-June and I decided to do some good with my pain and suffering by making it a fundraiser for our local food bank. What's great about the food bank is they can distribute $17 (retail) of food FOR EACH $ 1 DONATED! So besides being great in that they help hungry families out, it is extremely efficient!

So, while creating my fundraising site, I noticed there was no good way to get the word out - at least I couldn't find any - so I created a new website called

http://run100forcharity.info

As you will see, it is a horrible looking site that I stayed up until 2 AM this morning getting operational, but it is the CONTENT that matters, right?! :p You'll see my charity listed first (hey, since I'm the founder / creator of the site!) along with some other great charities (and extreme endurance events) you might care to donate to.

At any rate, thanks for reading this, and if you sign up for my charity, you'll actually get to suffer my pain / discomfort over the next 3 months as I get ready for the Mohican 100! I'll be sending out weekly or bi-weekly emailings to folks that provide their emails so you can see first hand what crazy-a** stuff I'm doing to get ready for this event!
-- Tom --

Only 9 days to go until the 100 mile trail race! I can't believe how quickly time has flown by. I've trained hard for it and I think I've positioned myself to at least have a chance of finishing it. The weather will be the wildcard, and right now it is looking like mid-80's based on the long-range forecast for next weekend. Last month (May) I put in 342 miles (an avg of about 11 miles per day). I've been doing heat acclimatization training to get my body ready for going through large amounts of fluids in short periods of time (sleeping in 85 deg temps in my basement, 157 deg DIY sauna in my basement, runs with too many layers of clothes on). I've also been doing hypergravity training for the past 2 months - wearing a 16 lb weight vest all day, and going on these trail training runs with a 20 lb hydration backpack on.

The most exciting part is I've had to raise my fundraising goal 3 or 4 times now and am now shooting at raising $6,000 for my local food bank - so if anyone wants to help me "Run Hunger Out of Erie - Together!" - please consider sponsoring me for the race! It will help a lot of needy families out in NW PA. My $5335 so far equates to about $88,000 (retail) of food the food bank can distribute to the hungry in northwest PA !!! So you really get a good "bang for the buck" - just like Ascend speakers! :p

sheesh! you definitely have more will than i do when it comes to training yourself for something like this... congrats on all your hard work and i hope the race goes well for you and everyone else participating.

Good luck on the race Tom...you are one motivated individual! That's some serious training you're putting yourself through. I made a small donation through the website...looks like a great cause and I'm still an old Pennsylvania boy at heart.

Hey Tom - this is fantastic. I can't get to the site right now (blocked from the computers I'm on as it's "uncategorized"), so if you could, shoot me an email _____ - so we can try to work out a method of donation....

Thanks, and goodluck! I wish I was running as much as you...

PS: if you want to work on heat acclimation, come hang out with me. it's 106 today, which feels quite balmy compared to last week ;)

Thanks for the support everyone, and thanks Chas for the donation !!! GREATLY APPRECIATED !!!

Nice work Tom!

Best of luck on the 100 miles (100 miles? Are you insane :p )

Let us know how it goes!

OMG, you guys put me over my fundraising goal of $6K - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!! That is $100,000 (retail) of food the food bank can acquire and distribute to the hungry in NW PA !!!!!!!!! $100 THOUSAND !

Thank you so much guys, I'll be sure to post a report on how I do at the race. Since this is my first 100 mile trail race up and down steep hillsides and through a river and several streams, I'm going to *just* aim at completing it this year, and worry about perhaps doing it faster next year. We'll see how this year goes though, this took 6 months of almost obsessive behavior and training - VERY time consuming. My wife will be glad when it is over with so we can get back to some semblance of normalcy in our household, and I'll be glad to get back to spending some time with my home theater and my beloved Ascend speakers. :p

Just thought I would let everyone know that this past weekend (Jun 16th / 17th) I ran the Mohican 100, my first attempt at a 100 mile trail race... and I finished it ! I was thrilled. 28:38:07 was my time. 30 hours was the time limit so I was waaaaaay under that. ;)

Thanks to generous folks such as you, together we enabled the Erie (PA) food bank to acquire & distribute $103,700 (retail) of food! I'm hoping to get a few more donations from the people that were waiting to see if I could do it or not. :rolleyes:

Congrats Tom!

But it makes my knees hurt just thinking about it. :)