Believe

No we did not go snowboarding today, but yes we ARE dressed for the snow. Today was our second training hike in 4 weeks to train for our Yosemite hike. We've had 2 rain-outs (even though last week turned out to be dry after all) so the coach decided that this week was a rain or shine training day. As the rain gods would have it, it was rain. Luckily the rain did not last the entire hike, but it was pouring when we arrived at 7:15 this morning, and lasted for almost half of our time on the trail. It was definitely a testament to the importance of the right type of gear. I was lucky enough to own a very waterproof snowboarding jacket and pair of boots. Stacy...not so much. Her boots kept her feet nice and dry, although the rest of her outfit was a different story. The snow jacket she bought at Wal-Mart must only be water repellent if no water touches it, and as for her pants...well let’s just say that we will be buying her a darker color and the one good thing about her jacket was its length. Poor Stacy! This was the type of day all of our parents have used as an example of how they had to hike 9 miles in the rain uphill both ways to get anywhere back in their day. It is now 2010 and we can now reply to our parents; "ME TOO"!

Each week, Stacy and I seem to meet new people from our team on the trail and this week I had an interesting conversation with a person I met. We were talking about how the training was the easy part of this whole adventure (did I mention we went 9 miles in the rain and wind over some steep hills?) and that the hard part was the fundraising. In fact, it seems like all our spare time lately has been devoted to Team in Training fundraising. We have been working hard to accumulate monetary donations, corporate sponsorships, and items that we will be selling raffle tickets for at a fundraising party we are planning. My hiking partner was a little more optimistic than I as she kept telling me to "BELIEVE". I told her that I "believe" that my hard work will pay off, but it will take a lot of effort on our part. When we got home, we chanted believe as we opened up our mail box and sure enough, there was a donation envelope inside. When we opened it, it turned out that a very special person had been collecting for us at her job. There was a generous stack of checks inside that put us at about 1/3 of our donation minimum goal! All we had to do was believe...and work hard! At this point I would like to thank each and every person who has donated to us, or plans to donate to us soon, no matter how big or small!

Here's the point. We believe that A CURE FOR CANCER WILL BE FOUND! We believe that WE WILL MAKE OUR DONATION GOAL ($8000)! We believe that WE WILL REACH THE TOP OF HALF DOME! We believe that the only way to get both of these things is through determination and hard work. Having worked in the service industry for many years, and currently as a teacher, I know that many hands make light work. If you are reading this, then you own a couple of those hands. Thank you for your support! Each donation we receive (no matter how big or small) helps us get that much closer to a cure. Thank you for your support! If you would like to help make light work of finding a cure for cancer, you can donate to Team Lost Dogs (Stacy and me) by clicking on the title of this blog; Believe!

Thank you,
Phil

Happy Feet

Since our hike tomorrow has been cancelled due to unpredictable weather conditions, I thought I would share a picture that I see everyday from the sound spelling cards (i.e., picture coded alphabet cards)in the classrooms where I teach. Looking at this today took on a new meaning besides F...Foot...FFFFF...spelled F and PH (my fellow teachers will appreciate this one). It reminded me of the 18 miles and 4737 ft. of elevation gain we are attempting to hike on June 19th! I'm pretty sure this is what we will see when we take the hiking boots off at the end of the day. I know this because this is exactly what Stacy and her sister Jaime's feet looked like after their 39.3 mile 2 day Avon breast cancer walk a couple of years ago. They actually had to visit a Dr. Scholl's blister tent to get patched up after walking a full marathon on day one so that they could complete a half marathon to finish up the event on day 2!

I would also like to announce that it was Stacy's 33rd birthday on February 17 and the only thing she wants for her birthday is a raise in temperature on our Team Lost Dogs donation thermometer (see widget on the right)! Stacy and I have a goal of raising $4000 by March 9 and we would like to raise $8000 by May 25! If you plan on donating but were thinking of waiting until closer to our event, sooner is definitely better than later for us. We may even have a celebration that you won't want to miss for all those who donate! We will keep you posted! Thank you for all of your support! We greatly appreciate all the donations, good thoughts, and all around support thus far!

Phil

Urban Cougars

After 6 hours of sleep, the alarm went off at 6:00am this morning! And for a moment, I thought to myself, "Why is the alarm going off? I don't have to work today...they just took their final!" Then I realized it was Saturday, and for a moment, I thought I'd go back to sleep, thinking I'd set the alarm by mistake. That is until I remembered that every Saturday until June 19 I will be getting up at this ridiculous hour of the morning (clue that we have no kids yet is that 6:00 am is ridiculous still for a Saturday, by the way) to meet the rest of the Team In Training hikers and our coaches and mentors to train for our Yosemite hike! So, I, after hitting snooze several times, finally rolled out of bed, grunted an unhappy reply to Phil's "Good Morning!" and got dressed.

We drove down to South Orange County to met the rest of the hikers, coaches, and mentors, and embarked on our journey. To our surprise, this would be what Phil and I are referring to as an Urban Hike (see photo). We went 5 miles today on a mostly paved path, up a pretty steep residential hill, and just as we were about to cross back across the major highway to our cars, we were told "You just missed the cougar!" The two women who told us about the cougar said we'd missed it by 10 minutes(although Phil and I do not think we missed him so terribly much, so much as we escaped his presence)! They explained that they were just finishing their hike when they saw what they thought was a stray dog. One of the ladies was cautious as it ran toward her, thinking, "not all dogs are friendly," and as it approached, she realized it wasn't a lost dog at all, and screamed, "It's a cat! It's a cat!" All of this is somewhat ironic given that prior to leaving for the hike, we had to place "toe tags" on our shoes in case of emergency.

We were out for about 2 hours and it was a good day overall! Although we only meet with them once a week, Phil and I are training on our own the rest of the week. As Phil is still rehabbing from his surgery in December, it is really important that he is cautious with his knee, and is pacing his training accordingly. I will continue with my treadmill walks on random and with bootcamp, and hope to see some more wildlife on our early morning Satureday hikes!

Thanks for keeping up with our training! Thanks to those of you who have donated as well! We still have a long way to go and every little bit counts, so if you would like to make a tax deductible donation, please visit our fundraising site: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ocie/Yosemit110/TeamLostDogs.

Also, we are planning to have a yard sale on of these days (when we trust the weather a bit more)! If you have anything that you need to get rid of and would like to donate the items to our yard sale, we would love to have them (if you live nearby, of course!) Thank you for all of your support as we set out on this journey to save the lives of so many people who are diagnosed with cancer every day!

The Story Behind The Lost Dogs

So a couple of people have been wondering about what hiking for a cure for leukemia and other forms of cancer has to do with searching for stray puppies. In case you're one of those people, or you are just curious why we picked "Team Lost Dogs" as Stacy and I's team name, then search for your answers no further! I am pleased to say that there are no lost dogs that I know of, roaming the streets homeless due to our team's lack of supervision! I do wish for all stray dogs to have a home, however those poor strays are not the inspiration for our team name, nor are we accepting donations for their placement with suitable families just yet. Our team name has a completely different inspiration and a sort of double meaning.

If you are familiar with the story of why we wanted to take on this challenge, then you know we are hiking and raising money for cancer research in memory of our friend Danny Moyle. Danny and I (Phil)were at a Pearl Jam concert the night before he found out he had leukemia. You can read more on that story on a prior blog post. Danny was a big fan of the band so I thought it would be fitting to name our team after something related to them. For any non Pearl Jam fans, Lost Dogs: Rarities and B Sides is a double album of rare Pearl Jam tracks that you would mostly be familiar with if you've seen them play these songs live. So the first meaning behind Lost Dog's new tricks ties in with something Danny was really in to; Pearl Jam.

Since we wanted a Pearl Jam-esque name for our team, we went through all song titles, album titles, and plenty of lyric sheets from the band before we finally decided on Lost Dogs to be the most fitting name. Thanks to Randy Jackson, I think many of us have referred to our friends as our 'dawgs' whether we like to admit it or not, at some point. In this case, Danny is our Lost Dawg and the team name reminds us that we need to do all we can to search for a cure for blood cancers so that sometime in the near future when people are diagnosed with any form of cancer, they can take comfort knowing that modern medicine has caught up with this deadly disease!

I guess when you think about it, we are in fact searching for lost dogs. Well not literally, but we are definitely trying to help search for something to help all of our dawgs of the world who have found out that they have some form of cancer.

Oh, and by the way,'...new tricks' isn't just there because it kinda’ has a nice ring to it (although it actually kinda’ does don’tcha think?). The 'new tricks' represents the added years of life we will help bring to cancer patients when a cure is found!

So that's the story behind Team Lost Dogs! Thanks for supporting our Team In Training efforts, and if you see any stray dogs roaming your neighborhood, please help find them a home!

Stacy's week 1 training update

So, I set out for the first training hike last Saturday, Feb. 5, however the rain followed me all the way to Irvine! It poured the entire drive there, and I managed to get lost...GPS is not perfect! :-) Anyway, when I called to find out where the rest of my team was, my team mentor told me that they were going to cancel; the rain was just coming down too hard! So, I drove back to the freeway and went home. But, "how am I am going to train for a hike like half dome in the gym?" I thought to myself. I decided that I'd go to the gym and do a workout on the treadmill, but I found the "random" setting. If you are not sure what the "random" setting is, I assure you, it is not something you always want to do. I definitely got a workout! I set my incline to level 15, which means that my lowest incline was at 5.5, and it went up to 11.3 (I think that's a % incline, but I am not sure), so it felt like I was actually going up and down hills like I would on a hike! And it worked me! Our training hike was supposed to be 3 miles, so I committed to 3 miles. It was such a good workout, I opted to do it again on Sunday, but this time, I started at level 13 and ended at level 17! I kept a 3.2 MPH pace, and finished the 3 miles in under an hour! Last night (Tues) I went to bootcamp and worked hard as usual, doing a circuit, squats, lunges, push-ups, etc. I will do another night of bootcamp on Thurs as well, and am planning for a walk of some sort Fri. Our first training hike (minus the rain) will be Sat! Let's hope for no rain!!! I will post another update next week!

Thanks again for all of your donations! We really appreciate them! We will be planning a garage sale, a poker night, and perhaps some other fundraising parties soon, so we will let you know in case you'd like to come to the party or have stuff to sell at the sale!

So why are we doing this you ask...

If you haven't had a chance to visit one of our personal sites or our team site yet, then you may not have had a chance to read about what would possibly possess Stacy and I to sign up for such a massive hike as a way to raise money for finding a cure for cancer.

The truth is, I wasn't even going to go to the sign up meeting on such an early Saturday morning last week. It wasn't because it was early on my day off, or because I thought it was a crazy thing to get myself into. We had actually been talking about raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for quite a while in memory of our friend Danny. I wasn't going to go to the meeting with Stacy because I wasn't sure if my knee would be able to handle the training. I had just had my second surgery on my right knee on December 16th, 2010, and I am still in physical therapy to rehab it. The 1st surgery was for a torn ACL which they had to reconstruct about 2 years ago. The most recent surgery was to fix a torn meniscus, fraying new ACL, arthritis patchwork, and tighten my fibular collateral ligament. You get to know knee parts pretty well after a few injuries. What that left me with was about 45% of my original meniscus (the cushion between your knee joints), some muscle atrophy and a map of new and old scars on my knee!

All this made me a bit nervous to attempt such a physical challenge. For some reason, I spontaneously decided to go with her to the meeting. During the meeting, I was trying to decide if it was a good idea or not to attempt this hike, but like all of the wise decisions I have ever made in my life, I guess I just told myself; "What the heck, Why not?" ...don't answer that! I couldn't let Stacy do it without me because it was both of our idea, plus I am the one who got her into hiking last year. She came with me on a couple of my training hikes while I was getting ready for my Yosemite to Mammoth backpacking trip. At least this time I won't have a 50 lb. pack weighing me down!

So as far as my training goes, it pretty much consists of upper body weightlifting, some ab-work, and physical therapy. I am hoping I will be able to join my training team soon on some hikes, but even though I am walking pretty well, I am only about 3 weeks off the crutches and still healing and trying to build back the atrophied muscles in my leg. I am dreading the day that I will tell my Dr. and physical therapist what I have gotten myself into. I'm not going to let a little boo-boo hold me back when I have the chance to help cure cancer!!! (YES, I said boo-boo...WHAT?!)

Most of us have been affected in some way by someone close to us being diagnosed with some form of cancer. My decision to complete this crazy event and raise money for cancer research was simple. I have the physical ability to go to one of the most beautiful places on the planet and see one of the most spectacular views imaginable from the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, CA! It is a place you can only visit by hiking to the top. I am fortunate to have this physical ability. I have always wanted to get to the top of Half Dome, but now I can do it to raise money to find a cure for cancer. I want to take advantage of my abilities and my love of the outdoors because I have a choice in life of whether to do this or not (bad knee or not). This choice has been taken from a lot of people who have been diagnosed with different forms of cancer. I am doing this to raise money for them so that someday THERE WILL BE A 100% CURE RATE OF ALL FORMS OF CANCER!!! Thank you for helping us give them back the ability to have the choice visit places like Half Dome by donating to our team! With it, you are helping save lives through the funding of research to help find a cure!

Thank You for your generous donations!

Phil Bacigalupi

http://pages.teamintraining.org/ocie/Yosemit110/TeamLostDogs