Weekly Fundraising and Training Update! What a Week!

Momentum! We've got it now! The week of June 3rd was our largest fundraising and training week of the year as we enter the home stretch to Bike MS...read all about it!

Yes, we just had our largest fundraising week of the year, with a total of $1,038 raised! We are now sitting at $4,358 towards our goal of $5,000. Highlights and shout-outs...

• What more can I say about the great fundraiser at Wiseguy Pizza Pie in Boise? We had an awesome time and raised $300! Once again, thank you to Wiseguy Pizza Pie, Meet Me Monday, and all of my generous friends and supporters who came out and made this event great!

From l to r: Mayor Bieter, Cheryl Bloom, Megan Nettleton and me - Bike MS Fundraiser at Wiseguy Pizza Pie

• Many friends and family members stepped up this week to help as well - including my uncle Glen McAdoo, and friends Steve & Betsy Delnista, Lance Shelton, Tammy Nickel, and Bob Kaiser & Mardi Stacy
• An old friend from Rick's and my hometown of Terry, MT helped out this week - thank you Barb Hinnaland! It's always special to get donations from old friends who knew Rick.
• A few anonymous donors stepped up some significant contributions as well...

Thank you, everyone!

Combined with last week's charity golf event, we have built some serious momentum coming up to the home stretch. You may recall that I keep a scorecard for my fundraising efforts, and I wanted to share with you just how much our fundraising has increased over the past couple weeks.

Here's how my scorecard looked a couple of weeks ago. The blue dashed line is a linear regression trend line of weekly fundraising. As you can see, the trend was heading down, and had been for a number of weeks. The most disturbing line, though, was the green dashed line - which indicates how much I'd need to raise week-to-week to hit my goal, given how much I've raised to-date. I call this the "catch-up" line. In the software sales world, that's often how the end of a sales quarter would look - with our sales team working frantically to close deals by the end of the quarter. Having that much ground to make up sure creates a lot of pressure on everyone.

Fundraising chart, week of May 20th

This is how my scorecard looks as of today, June 9th. Big difference!

Fundraising chart, week of June 3rd

As you can see, the actual donations (red solid line) have shot up. The trend line has flattened out, and is now running parallel to my required weekly average. And, the "catch up" line has dipped dramatically, and is now more or less equal to my overall required weekly average. Long story short - if we keep up the pace, we'll blow our $5,000 goal out of the water!

I should mention that it was a great week for the entire Team WinCo as well! Team captain Greg Goins stepped up big-time last week, raising over $2,000 and sweeping a bunch of Team Fundraising week challenge awards. Greg also has ratcheted up the pressure on the team to fund raise and to train by sending out several motivational emails. I really appreciate the work you put in Greg! Our newest team member, Kathleen, also dove into fundraising in a big way. I believe that we raised over $4,000 as a team last week - that is fantastic, and I'm really proud to be working with all these great folks.

Training

Last week was also our biggest week of training so far this year. I got in 189 miles of riding, including the Bob LeBow century ride on Saturday, June 8th. I feel like I am almost ready for Bike MS physically. More time in the saddle over the next few weeks will help minimize the fatigue and post-ride soreness I'll surely have after riding 175 miles in two days for Bike MS. But, for the first time this year, I'm pretty comfortable about where my fitness level is for the event. And an incident involving an exploding tire on the LeBow ride was a good reminder to assess the gear that I carry on longer rides...

Doug Jenkins and me at the Bob LeBow century ride

I believe we also had more organized team rides last week than we've had all year...and again, Greg is largely to thank for that with his emails and reminders. On Sunday, June 9th, we had our largest group ride of  the year, with 5 riders turning out for a ride to Lucky Peak in the heat of the afternoon. And, I got to meet teammate Mark Lavin for the first time. Mark appears to be a strong rider, and will be a great addition to the team.

From l to r: Greg, Eric, Doug, and Mark Lavin

I like this picture, as it captures the spirit of most of our rides - everyone laughing and joking before getting down to business. Speaking of which, I better wrap up this update, and get to planning fundraising activities and training for these next couple of weeks. Momentum! Let's keep it rolling!