Heres the site with all the marathon photos i am collecting from everyone

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8937218@N05/

I beat Katie Holmes!!!!!

I DID IT

i finished the marathon!

my final time was 5 hours 1 minute and 19 seconds

it was an amazing experience even though i was off my expected pace by about 30 to 40 minutes but what can you do!

still not sure im going to ever do this again though but maybe hitting my expected time will be enough to drive me to run another one.

I would like to thank everyone who came to support me (erica, carly, mom, dad, ari, lauren, uncle mike, tara, tal, uncle steve, aunt gayle, danny and marian -- and also farrel, gertrude, cathy r and andrew h whom i saw along the way)

i hit some trouble early on in the race - shin splints at mile 2-6, then tight hips in mile 13 and then some cramping/hitting the wall at mile 17 is when the wheels came off...note to self: dont binge drink and eat 3 weeks prior to a marathon!

so far we are likely to hit $5,500 in charity funds! so thanks to everyone for that!

if anyone wants pix please shoot me an email at david (dot) weisfelner (at) gmail (dot) com

see you next marathon....?

Cya at the finish line

not much to say except its less than 24 hours away

very excited and nervous and anxious

and we topped $5,000 in donations with more rolling in!

Budapest: Home of Goose Liver, Thermal Baths and.......BUM FIGHTS

So last week i spent a week in lovely Budapest for work. Did your typical touristy merry-go-round: Went to the Budapest Mall, visited the local tesco and caught a bum fight....all within the first 2 hours of my visit!

The conference was a huge success but very tiring...as we were entertaining well into the wee hours

Didn't run all that much while i was there...instead i ate and drank a hell of a lot. Kind of had to in order to put the image of the bum fight out of my head.

Also, i would have pix to share except my camera broke. As erica handed me her camera she said "Please dont break my camera"....she may as well have just thrown it on the floor at that point...i get to budapest after taking the red-eye on the hungarian airline Malev...which is trapped in 1980s nostalgia...the in flight movies were wall street and romancing the stone....lest i digress...i arrive in lovely budapest with ericas camera in my backpack the whole way. i place it in my pocket so that i can bring it to tesco where we need to buy 3000 servings of soda (long story). so when i take the camera out to document the ridiculousness of a shopping cart filled with soda, the lens gets stuck and i cant get it to go back in which causes the camera to basically shut down for good.....happy news is that i managed to fix it at 3am on the last night!!!!

Other than that i've got nothing....except that i am now 10 days away from completing this journey...and we have raised over $4,500! Not bad eh?

Many to thank, but most importantly erica and the kids, without their support i dont think id ever be able to do this!

Will try to squeeze off another post or two prior to 11/4

Baby, You're The Greatest

Well everyone - today marks the day when 11 years ago i married my prom date.

I just want to let her know that I love her now even more so than ever before and for bearing with me through all these years, lord knows it hasnt been easy!

On top of that, i'm off to Budapest for a week - i leave tomorrow for a global conference we have put together at work for one of our clients

I will try to keep my training up as i hit the final stretch

TOTAL MONEY RAISED SO FAR = $3,600 and more coming in!

Speak to you all next week when i return - and thanks to everyone

I think my daughter watches too much "emergency vets" on animal planet

OK

So a few weeks ago erica and i go to "meet the teacher night" as our daughter carly has just begun 1st grade. The projects the kids had done in the 1st few weeks were hanging around the room. One of them caught our eye....the project was "My Greatest Hero" with the assignment being that they had to write who their hero is and a draw a picture. All of the kids did stuff like firemen, their dads and run of the mill heroes one would expect....but not our daughter...she apparently "adapted" a story she saw on animal planet to make it seem like it happened on our street....take a look for yourself below (with my translation underneath) and bear in mind the following:

1) our neighbor does not have a dog
2) our neighbors name is not mady
3) the dog in the picture is now a quadruple amputee
4) the teacher did not question the validity of this story
5) but the teacher did call "bullshit" on carly when carly told the teacher she couldnt sit in the back of the room because she was getting glasses (she doesnt need glasses)
6) she dotted all her i's with hearts




















My greatest hero is Mady. She helped my next door neighbors dog. It was in the street. She lost her legs.

Now back to business.....we have raised about $3500! Thanks to everyone again!

I ran my longest run so far this past sunday - 20 Miles! my pace was quite good at under 10 minutes per mile and i felt great!

Marathon is less than 5 weeks away (31 days but who's counting?)

shiver me timbers, i snuck in 3 miles this marrrrrning

Today is national talk like a pirate day

insert bootie jokes here

thats all for now

I've Run All The Way to Altoona

Hi everyone - its been a busy week and a half with the jewish holidays, back to school and all around craziness that normally follows me around.





Anyways, a quick update as to my status....my cumulative mileage in training is roughly the distance from my house in Syosset, NY to Altoona, PA. I've mapped that below:




















Whats kind of cool is that in these 11 weeks i have run nearly as far as i ran from january thru june....if we were to map my total miles for the year i would be almost to dayton, oh






















So all in all when i think about the long run i did yesterday its really not all that far.

By the way, my long run yesterday was my farthest to date - 18 miles. I finished in just over 3 hours - 3H7M7S to be precise. Puts me on pace for a 4H20M marathon. Now with the weather starting to cool a bit im kind of feeling that 26 miles is really not that big a deal!

One last thing - we are up to almost $3,000 in donations and i would like to thank each and everyone of you who have donated so far!

I'd certainly entertain a sugar daddy

OK

So Steve Jobs unveiled the new line of apple products today and i have never felt so old school with my 3rd Generation iPod and 1st Generation shuffle:

take a look at these beauties...and feel free to send any and all of them to me in exchange for a lifetime of my undying friendship...you can buy them here

Also, ran 16 miles on saturday capping off a 30 mile week. The hip pain i have been having is finally starting to go away thank god. This week is another 30 miler but with a 12 mile run on saturday as a cap to longer weekday runs (3x 5 miles and 1x 3 miles).

The following week is the killer: 18 miles

Donations are up to a little over $2,600!!!

enjoy the eye candy

Just a quick follow up to my previous post

click it to make it larger

nothing more....i just find this hysterical

I believe the children are our future

not sure if anyone saw this gem from the miss teen usa 2007 broadcast. It almost reminds me of how i used to answer essay questions...restate the question as often as you can and then throw as many words as possible at the answer.....and like a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters, eventually the right answer will appear...take a peek at this and leave a comment if you can figure out what her answer is....be patient and let it load as there is high demand for it right now



Other than that all is good...checks are rolling in and my miles are getting easier....

logged a 25 mile week this past week and im facing a 30 mile week this week...the bulk of which is a 16-mile run...which will become my longest single run to date. hopefully the heat and humidity will break soon. running 10 miles this past sunday was brutal even early in the morning.

I DID IT

Today was my long run of 15 miles. The weather cooperated and we lost that horrible heat and humidity. My previous longest run was 13 miles and i was a little anxious about running 15, especially after the week of eating and drinking we did in SF & Napa. Nevertheless i managed to bang out the distance in about 2 hours and 42 minutes...this was a little longer than i had hoped for as it puts my marathon time at about 4 hours 45 minutes and i was aiming for 4.5 hours or less. I've been working some hills in to my runs to prepare me for the bridges so at least i will ready for those challenges on race day.

As far as the trip to California goes we had a great time...we ate at fantastic restaurants, drank a ton of wine and just laughed our asses off the whole time. We crammed a lot of activity into the time we had and one of the more memorable ones was biking through San Francisco for 4 hours. We rode through golden gate park, up to the presidio and over the golden gate bridge before we reversed our path. The training is paying dividends as i was able to easily climb even the steepest of hills without even losing my breath...unfortunately erica and the other couple struggled a bit with the hills but we had fun all the same.





Shout out to my cousin Matt who played host on Friday night - it was great to see you

If anyone is heading to SF or Napa and needs suggestions as to hotels, restaurants or wineries let me know as we luckily had an awesome streak of luck in the choices we made.

Also, we are slightly over the $2,000 mark - thanks again!!!!!!

Off to Napa...

Erica and I are heading to SF/Napa with good friends of ours. We're going to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary (a little late) as will our friends (theirs is a little early). This should make up for the trip to the Florida Keys we had planned for our 5th anniversary...that trip was scheduled 1-month after the 9-11 tragedy and we really didnt think it would be the best idea to travel.

Will try to keep my training going...just need to put in 3 or 4 runs of 4-miles each in which i think is pretty manageable.

We'll be meeting up with my cousin Matt on Friday night who has moved out to SF.



Other than that the plan is to just un-wind, drink, hit the spa and just have fun!

See you all next week.

I Can't Wait For the Next Season to Start

1st the training update

Training is still going strong...finished week #4 and week #5 has the longest run in my training to date: 13 miles. I've run the distance before but never in this heat and humidity.

Now to the video...so after everyone thought curb your enthusiasm was gone for good it looks like it will be back in september...this is just a scene that had me peeing my pants

thanks for the support to everyone!

david weisfelner

Maybe I Ought To Monitor Their TV More Closely

DAVID WEISFELNER DAVID WEISFELNER DAVID WEISFELNER DAVID WEISFELNER

This is a completely unrelated post to the marathon or fund raising

but i was watching this episode of Dora with Leo today and it went all "gangsta" on me - see for yourself

This actually has gone global

david weisfelner

I have a confession to make: I'm a data geek

With what little experience I have with blogging, I did manage to put in some code that allows me to use Google's Analytics package to slice and dice the visitor statistics for my blog.

One little tool i found demonstrates where in the world the visits are coming from. Its quite interesting. as you can see from the map - all the regions shaded in green are where visitors are sourced from. In the past week I have added England and Israel (thanks to the family) and also Santiago, Chile. Not sure who that could be...anybody have a guess? leave a comment and maybe we can figure it out

All in all its been a good week for both training and fundraising. we have raised almost $2,000 so far and the checks keep pouring in.

As far as training goes, finished week #3 easily. The long run was saturday at 10 miles. I checked my logs and it was actually the longest i have run in over 2 months, since i ran the Long Island Half Marathon but i still felt good all in all.

Thanks again - and keep passing this blog address along!

Slightly Off Topic Post

This past weekend was Leo's 3rd Birthday Party.

His Uncle Ari & Aunt Lauren came and spent the weekend with us...Lot's of fun playing in the pool and with our WII. With all the activity i still managed to get in my miles this weekend.

So now begins week #3 of training. Hate to say its been easy so far but it has. I haven'd had to push myself farther than I have in the past. I guess we will see how it goes when my weekly mileage really starts building up.

I have one long run this weekend (10 miles) surrounded by some shorter runs (3 and 4 miles). All in all its a 20 mile week, still not too crazy.

The pledges keep rolling in and I'm amazed by everyones generosity.

THANKS!

Hot and Humid

So the 1st week of training is pretty much over. Nothing too hard really as this is a gradual build up of weekly miles.

My long run was this morning. It was 8 miles and i handicapped myself by having a few drinks the night before (Highly recommend Patron Silver!).

I mixed up my schedule a little bit due to the holiday week. Instead of doing what was on the plan, i ran the Long Beach Boardwalk which was interesting. The boardwalk has a little more "give" but the planks are not all level which worked my calves/shins pretty hard. Since this run was a shade under 5-miles I will shorten my last 3-miles run so that i hit my weekly mileage and not overtrain.

The donations have been coming in slowly but a lot of people have "pledged" so once those checks roll in we can expect to see the donation total climb!

Keep passing this along and thanks for everyones support!

NYC Marathon Training Begins...

It actually begins tomorrow, but this is the 1st week of training for me.

Looks to be a slow light week, with my long run coming in at 8 miles but i'm excited to get underway!

The donations are staring to stream in, and at the suggestion of some of you i have opened a paypal account if you would like to donate that way. Contact me for details as to how to do that if you need.

Going to keep this short and sweet.

Thanks to everyone so far!

Info About Who We Are Doing This For

Just in case you want to learn more about our friends niece, keep up to date with her progress etc...

http://www.caringbridge.org/

once there you need to enter her name (alexareneemoore) as indicated in the below - then you need to fill out some basic contact/registration info





Thanks again everyone and lets try to keep this viral!

Quick Update re: Where to Donate

Just wanted to let everyone know that we now know which fund to donate to.

You have 2 choices in terms of how you can donate money

Choice 1: Make a donation directly to MSKCC and specify that funds go to Patient/Family Services - Quality of Life. This will ensure that you receive tax credit and possibly just make it easier for you

OR (and what I think is the better choice and therefore gets a larger font size)

Choice 2: Send me a check directly. This will allow us to take advantage of the very generous offer by some folks at Pfizer to double our donation. I will amass all donations and let Pfizer know the amount to match

If you don't have my mailing address please email me and i will send it to you (david dot weisfelner AT gmail dot com --> being spam paranoid here)

...and please don't forget - pass this along to friends and family - you can email this web post by clicking on the little envelope below this post

thanks!

OK, Now What?!

So in the past couple of hours, in the few minutes I can spare between job-related work, I have been teaching myself how to use this.

I have spent the last few years of my life, both as a consumer and a professional, studying blogs and now have a new found respect for bloggers. This aint as easy as it looks my friend!

So, what have I done in the past few hours?

Basically I updated the side bar which includes the following

• i have included the following ways you can help, which provides links to the donation page at Sloan Kettering...I am waiting to hear from the family as to where donations should be directed and will update soon. There is also a link to information as to how you can donate blood/platelets

• a section that will chronicle who has donated so far. Since everyone will be donating directly the only way i can find out how big an impact we have made will be to ask everyone to let me know how much they have donated. I'll have to do it manually unless someone can teach me a better way

• an update as to my training...figure i'll post blog entries as to my random thoughts surrounding training, but the section in the side bar will track how many miles i have run in training thus far...broken out by year, month and week to date

other posts to follow may not be related remotely to the marathon so bear with me, hopefully you will find it to be of some sort of redeeming value!

I'm In!!!!!

After completely missing the entry deadline I managed to pull some strings and got myself into the 2007 NYC Marathon
I have decided to try and turn this effort into something bigger. The 3 year old niece of a friend of ours has been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. She and her family have already experienced a lifetime of stress, anxiety and medical treatments. I would like to try and raise as much money as possible but not sure yet where to donate. I need to check with the family if they would like donations to be made to help offset family medical expenses at Sloan Kettering or to help fund specific cancer research as it relates to her condition.

I will be posting many more updates to come...including news of my training and how you can help me raise money for this little girl.

See you soon!