T Minus One Week!



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I am getting really excited about the big race on June 12! After much deliberation, we have finalized the official See Andrea Run team t-shirts! I’ve purchased shirts for everyone who signed up to join our 5k team but want to make them available to anyone else interested in joining us from afar. The link below will take you to zazzle.com where you can purchase these limited edition gems :)

http://www.zazzle.com/see_andrea_run_tshirt-235257985241462342

Additionally, I want to extend a HUGE thank you to all of those who have donated to this important cause. Thanks to you, we have raised $1,850 so far! I’m so touched by all of the support and feel great about us being able to make such a sizable impact!

If you still want to contribute and/or sign up to join us on June 12, there’s still time! Just click HERE for the team page. You can sign up until the day of the race and donations are accepted until June 17.


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See Andrea Run

June 12 seemed really far away when I first learned of the Donate Life 5k. I was sure my goal of running a mile straight was achievable. I secretly hoped I’d be able to run the full 5k but opted for a more modest goal. Theoretically, I thought, a young and otherwise athletic person should be able to run at least a mile ELEVEN months post-transplant.

But things don’t always go as expected – I can certainly attest to that. For a variety of reasons my exercise has progressed more slowly than I’d hoped and running a mile straight remains a lofty goal.

It’s a loft goal yes, but one that I’m fully committed to making a reality in a few short weeks. I know I can do it if I can drum up some serious support! Here’s where you come in.

Do you run? If so, please sign up to walk/run with me! (There is a $25 sign-up fee.) You’ll be supporting me and all future recipients of life-saving transplants in New Jersey. The more people I have jogging [slowly] beside me, the better the chance I have of running that full mile!

Are you loud? A bunch of cheerleaders near the end of the race would move mountains for me. Just picturing cheerleaders helps me push for an extra minute on the treadmill, so imagine the power of a real live cheering section!

Can’t make it in person? Please make a donation of any size to our team! The NJ Sharing Network (also known as Donate Life New Jersey) is the organization responsible for raising awareness of organ donation in this state, matching donors with recipients and facilitating contact between the donor family and transplant recipient. Needless to say, I’m extremely passionate about this wonderful group.

Like t-shirts? You’re in luck. Commemorative team (See Andrea Run) t-shirts are in progress…more to come!

Aside from returning to work, this is my biggest post-transplant milestone thus far. Please help me achieve my goals of raising $1500 for this critical cause and running that full final mile on Sunday, June 12.

The event takes place at 10am in New Providence, NJ. Click on the link below for our team site and look for the buttons that say “donate here” and/or “join this team”.

SEE ANDREA RUN

With your support, I can do this and we can all help raise awareness of organ donation. THANK YOU!!

Winning...Part Deux

First – to belatedly follow-up on “Winning” the first, I am happy to announce that Eva Cauble (oddly another Eva C. winner but I promise a different one!) won the AHA Cookbook challenge for healthy eating tips and recipes! At the bottom of this post is her delicious-looking recipe for homemade granola and the other tips I received. Thanks to those who participated!

No offense to Eva or you other contributors, but what I’m SUPER excited to announce is the fact that I just ran TEN MINUTES straight! This is three minutes more than my previous best and gets me within spitting distance of running a full mile straight, which is my goal for June 12. I have signed up and created a team for the June 12 5k for Donate Life, and I will provide full details very soon. In the meantime, rest assured that I am continuing to push myself. Some work-outs are great, others are brutal – I continue to try to identify trends among the good ones. I think I’ve landed on 1) an empty stomach, 2) plenty of sleep and 3) ensuring my HR is over 120 and climbing before starting to run. Stay tuned for details on the June 12 5k!

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Healthy Granola

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 T ground cinnamon
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup grade A dark amber syrup
2 T butter
1/2 cup craisins
1/2 cup dates
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325. Mix together the first 5 ingredients. In a small bowl, stir together the syrup and melted butter. Pour the syrup mixture over the dry ingredients, coating the dry ingredients well. Spread this mixture onto baking sheets (greased or lined with parchment paper) and bake for 30-45 minutes until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Add the craisins, dates, and chocolate chips or whatever dried fruit combination you prefer.

Cookbook Tip
Ellie Krieger (The Food You Crave and So Easy) – healthy, delicious and super easy to make

General Tips
1. Track food intake throughout the day – one free resource is a tracker at www.mypyramidtracker.gov
2. Use a rolling 10-day average of how well you’ve maintained healthy eating habits, this way you won’t have to suffer so much guilt if you cheat or stray one day!

2 + 3 + 3 = EIGHT

You know those cars that can go from zero to sixty in like three seconds? For that to happen, the car engine obviously has to react as soon as the gas pedal is depressed. Well, that’s essentially how most people’s hearts work. Your body tells your heart it needs to hustle as soon as you exert yourself, which provides you with the proper physiological support. A transplant recipient’s heart operates more like a little four-cylinder vehicle, which works fine once it’s warm but needs some time to catch up after the gas pedal is pushed. Because some nerves are cut during transplantation, it takes time for my heart to figure out that my body needs it to pick up the pace.

So while most gym-goers hop right on the treadmill or elliptical and pump it up to full speed, I need to start out very slowly and work my way up. I begin walking at a leisurely pace, then increase the speed and introduce increasing amounts of incline to get my heart moving. Because I’m only able to get my heart rate up to about 120 walking (resting is 105), my first episode of jogging is really quite miserable. However, once my heart is beating at between 140 and 155 beats per minute, jogging becomes worlds easier. The trick is to insert the right amount of walking between each jogging spurt so that I get a bit of a rest but maintain the high heart rate.

So what in the world does 2 + 3 + 3 = EIGHT mean? That’s the number of minutes I jogged on Sunday as a part of my most intense post-transplant workout yet! I felt like Rocky afterwards. I slowed my pace a little from earlier jogging efforts per my dad’s sage advice and felt much better and was able to run longer, both in terms of time and distance. I spent 35 minutes on the treadmill with eight total minutes of jogging (two minutes, then three minutes, then another three minutes). My new pace is 12 minutes/mile or 5 mph. Not exactly breaking records, but making progress!

I completed the same amount of time on the treadmill tonight, again with the 2 + 3 + 3 jogging format. However, tonight’s experience was pretty brutal. I know everyone has tough workouts sometimes, but it’s frustrating to have ONE good workout and then a bad one. It’s hard to get myself back into the gym after feeling bad, but I’ll try to keep Sunday’s Rocky workout in my brain instead of today’s crappy one. I know my workouts will become more pleasant as my body gets more and more accustomed to being pushed. It’s just sometimes difficult to transition knowing something into actually doing it.

I have a new goal, which will help keep me motivated. Donate Life New Jersey is holding a 5k run/walk on June 12, and I intend to participate. I intend to RUN. Don’t get too excited, I won’t be ready to run the whole thing by then, but my goal is to run at least a mile straight. Who’s coming with me?

Heart Walk 2010

I’ll keep this short and sweet – the pictures tell a better story than I could anyway! Thanks to MANY friends and family members, I was able to raise $3320 for the American Heart Association (and that’s before any company matching programs)! Our team of 10.5 (ten adults and a baby) crossed that finish line with no problem! My sneaky mom even came into town and surprised me at the walk! It was pretty great to get that 5k walk under my belt – now I look forward to a 5k run. Probably WAY forward, but I’ll get there. So far I’ve jogged four minutes in a single work out, two minutes consecutively.

Thank you again to all of the generous donors and a HUGE thank you to Team Andrea:

Mom – VP, Surprise
Marguerite – Fashion Director & Surprise Coordinator
Chris – Manager, Halloween Hair
Breezy – Director of Photography
Nick – Senior Assistant to the Photographer & Chauffeur (for better or worse)
Karin – Manager, Team Spirit
Marion – Manager, Entertainment
Kara – Manager of Two Below Team Members
Sean – Manager of Four Letter Words
Ryan – Cutest Team Mascot Ever