Still going!

Sorry I haven't updated for a few days, but a lot has been going on. Today Kristi Mayo put together a press release for our event that is in my opinion FREAKING AWESOME!!! We should start getting it out to people later this week or early next week, hopefully it will get us a little exposure. Yesterday the fundraiser was a topic of discussion on a radio program in the Bay Area, the DJ is a Iraq War vet that said he will continue to promote our fundraiser the best he can.

I have had a lot of people ask who has donated for the raffle, so on Sunday I will compile a list of all businesses that I have received gift cards or donations from, as well as people who have donated. I will do this at the end of every month, those who donate need a little recognition in my opinion! I have a lot of verbal "yes I will donate" from many businesses, but only the ones who have completed the task will be recognized. That's all for now.

End of week news and T-shirt info

One more week and we will have completed our first full month of fundraising and up to this point it has been nothing short of amazing! The personal donations are closing in on $3500 and we have many businesses that have committed to a financial donation as well. I am finding out that with many of the larger corporations and businesses it can take up to 90days for these things to get approved through the proper channels, glad we started when we did!!! Below I will just briefly hit on some key things that have happened over the week. This was a "light" week for my training, but I will ramp up the miles considerably next week again. Depending on what my body is telling me, my training will most likely stay at 2 or 3 high mileage weeks and 1 lighter week with low miles and a lot of cross training. GOTTA STAY INJURY FREE!

- I made a mistake with the T-shirts. I told everyone they were sweat wicking, well the shirts for $10 are actually cotton T-shirts. Brent at Resort Promo Wear has put the sweat wicking shirts on there now, they are $5 more, SORRY!!! That was totally my fault.www.allthesetees.com

-Tuesday June 8th, 2010 at "On The Border" New Market Square is Wounded Warrior night. We will get 10% of sales from that evening between 4pm to 10pm. I spoke with Leah one of the managers this week, she is making flyers and I will have them out next week. The Army is talking about bringing a HUMVEE for the kids to check out and I am hoping we can fill the lot with bikes from the American Legion Riders!!!

- Still have no definite place for a Wichita Raffle??? I had no idea that it would be this difficult to find an event in Wichita, oh well, I am still trying. I have a HUGE stack of gift cards from restaurants and other businesses stacking up next to me here, it would be a shame to have to hold two raffles in the KC area.

- Saturday June 26th at the Maize South School track we will have our 9 hour walk/jog/run. We are asking everyone to come out and if possible donate $1 per lap you do. Its an "on your honor" event, I will run the entire 9 hours for a training run. Looks like we will possibly have MILE 90 productions there making a video and taking pictures. So far we have the Marines, Army, Navy and Wichita FD all committed, not to mention 3 local businesses challenging employees. One businesses owner said for every lap his employees do whether it be walk or run, he will match it! Sounds like a GREAT idea to me! I have already spoken to people from the KC area that are coming down for the track event and doing fundraising for me in that area, WOW, the support is tremendous!

As I have said before, I am open to any suggestions and comments. Please call me any time 316-253-6915. Thank you all and Semper Fi, Tony

Basic questions for Tony

For those of you whom I have never met,this is a short video of me. Kyle Amos is just asking some basic questions about the fundraiser and Wounded Warrior project. If I look a little out of it, its because we just finished a marathon about 45Min's before!

T-shirts are done!

As I stated yesterday, Brent Welch of Resort Promo Wear is just about as awesome of a guy as there is. Not only did he get the shirts up for sale today and make the price an unbelievable $10, he went one step further. This is a quote from the e-mail I received from Brent today "I figured we would give $5 for every shirt sold back to you". WOW! So you can get a shirt for $10, he will ship it to you and $5 dollars of that is going to the Wounded Warriors. www.allthesetees.com
Brent is also offering hoodies, tank tops and long sleeve tees, these obviously are a different price but he is still giving on heck of a deal. There are 4 color options- grey, pink, sandstone and white. I cannot tell you how excited we are about this, we will also be selling shirts at some of the "mini" fundraisers throughout the summer. Please check these out and if your business or maybe some other event needs some type of apparel please consider giving Brent a call or check his company out on line. www.ResortPromoWear.com

T-Shirts! And we broke $2500 today!!!

A childhood friend of Dan Elsener, Brent Welch owns Resort Promo Wear here in Wichita, Kansas. www.ResortPromoWear.com Brent has come up with a pretty cool shirt for us and the first batch should be ready Friday. At that time he will give me a price of what the shirt cost for him to make, we will add $5 to the shirt cost and that $5 will go towards our goal. Brent has agreed to make the shirt's at straight cost, this is his donation to our event! Quite a gift, usually people mark up the shirt, charge a printing and screening fee, this is going to be a great deal for all of us. These will be sweat wicking "running style" shirts.

I just returned home from speaking with the Marines, Army and Navy recruiters about there participation in our June 26th track run fundraiser. All 3 of these military branches are truly going out of there way to help. Some are providing humvees for the kids to look at and handing out water bottles and shirts. We are working with the FireDept about getting a ladder truck out there as well. If you can walk a lap around a track, please show up June 26th. If 1000 people walk one lap and pay $1, that is a lot of money and so easy!!!
Angel went and picked up more gift cards for the raffle today and we have to present a proposal to the YMCA for setting up our "Wichita" raffle at there 8k event here in June,(Rock and Run) more details when this is finalized. We have also broke $2500 in personal donations in less that one month, this is donations from just people! We should have the number on corporate donations so far in the next week or so. All of you are great, thank you and keep up the good work! Semper Fi

Inaugural Kansas Marathon/ great training day

Well, all in all a really great day. This was an inaugural race so I figured it would be a bit unorganized and chaotic, I was wrong. Very well organized with a lot of experienced runners as volunteers, I highly recommend this marathon!I talked to Kyle a little over a week ago and asked him if he was up for a paved training run, he hesitantly said "what do you have in mind". (Kyle will be one of the key members to my 224mile run) I told him about the marathon and to my surprise he immediately said YES! Kyle lives in Olathe, Kansas and runners in northeastern Kansas have the luxury of having some really great trail systems and you have groups such as the Lawrence Trail Hawks and Kansas City Trail Nerds who utilize those trails daily. We do not have that luxury in the Wichita area, when I want off road, I go to the "big ditch". So most runners in that area prefer the trails over road running. Kyle, myself and Greg Burger another ultrarunner we knew, was out for a training run as well, so we stuck together and chatted the entire race.

Planned on a 4 hour finish today, wanted to work on slowing my pace and eating regularly,(hammer gels) but we got hung up in the marathon atmosphere and finished about 20mins sooner than planned. Oh well, I have a few more months to get it right. Usually I finish in the high 2:40's or low 2:50's, so today was really fun for us. We talked and encouraged others the entire time. The whole point of today was a good paved training run and to be pain free at the completion, we accomplished that today.
I look forward to another great week of training and fundraising ahead. Lower miles for the week ahead, but a lot of speed work. Seems to be working for me, doing 2 weeks of decent long miles and then a lighter week of hard speed work and tempo runs. I will keep you posted on any new news or sponsors! Semper Fi, Tony

More great people offering help!

I am making every attempt to keep this blog updated with all new info, so I do not forget anyone or anything. We received more gift cards yesterday from local businesses for our raffles. As many cards as we are getting it seems that two raffles will most likely be the logical thing.

We do have one raffle location locked down for sure, it will happen Saturday July 10th at Wyondaotte Country park at the Kansas City Trail Nerds; Mizuno Cabrakan PsychoPsummer 15mile and 50k race. Most likely sometime in the afternoon once the majority of the racers have finished. Race directors BadBen Holmes and Sophia Wharton have graciously offered to let us set up a table at which time we will sell raffle tickets for $1 each. At this point we are looking at somewhere around 20 to 25 items to be raffled, mostly restaurant gift cards but we have been in contact with some local electronics businesses who are showing interest? Please check out the race website at www.psychowyco.com If you want to run arguably one of the toughest trails in Kansas or are a marathoner kicking around the idea of venturing into the world of Ultrarunning I highly suggest this race, I ran this event in 2007 and 2008 and never left disappointed! I am trying to lock down a raffle spot in Wichita, but at this point I have no call backs? If any of you Race Directors reading this in the Wichita area want a raffle at your event this summer, drop me a line ASAP!

The next items are both also highly motivating as well, the first being a woman by the name of Beth Walz. My friend Kelly introduced me to her facebook page, so I looked Beth up and wrote her a letter explaining our event. She immediately wrote back with interest and apparently has a radio show as well she is trying to squeeze us into. You can check her out on facebook or go to www.AdventureWoman.com She is quite a motivating lady and I look forward to speaking with her in the future.
All of you who follow the facebook page know that as soon as I get a donation I plaster it on the fanpage and people are coming up with new ideas to raise money daily, the one you are about to hear is the best so far! Danny Jackson an Assistant Baseball Coach for the Saint Louis University Billikens and former Wichita State Shocker slugger, contacted me last night and said that the Billikens have a "STUPID JAR" that is collecting money. Every time a player does or says something stupid one dollar goes into the jar. At the end of Day 1 we have $7 he said. He hopes to not only raise money for the Wounded Warriors he said, but hopefully at the same time his team gets a little smarter! All I can say is thanks DAN-O, we are all Billiken fans now.

Answer a few questions

The picture is from Leadville 100, what a bunch of rif-raf!
First of all I would like to again thank everyone for there support. I received a handful of emails each day from people I have never met before wishing us luck on the fundraiser and the run. A few people to this point have asked "how in the heck are you gonna run 224 miles" or "how many days is it gonna take"??? The answer to question number one is, I will not actually RUN all 224 miles, if all goes as planned and my body holds up I will run the majority of it, but in ultrarunning you learn how to run/walk, I will explain.

First of all, an ultrarunner is anyone who runs beyond the 26.2 mile range (marathon). The next step up is usually a 50k and then 50 milers and 100 milers are pretty common ultramarathon distances. The key is to find a good balance of running and walking to save your legs for multi day races. Unless you are a super stud elite athlete, which I am not, you cannot physically run for 100 miles or more. The approach that Kyle Amos and I have discussed for day one of the event is probably 20mins running 2 mins powerwalking and powerwalk all big hills. Hills suck up so much energy and calories, why burn them when you can save them for later. It takes a lot of trial and error to find your balance, for me eating a Hammer Gel every 20 mins and drinking water and HEED(sports drink) allows my body enough calories to sustain through a 100 mile event. Seeing that we will be going twice that far, solid foods will be implemented in our plan as well. Ultrarunners have to find out what there own personal bodies like after a full day of moving, you may love bananas any other day, but at mile 90 of a race they may make you sick? The body is very funny that way. We should have no problem getting through the first day and a half I think, it is night number two that is going to be a GUT check for me. If my body completely starts to shut down I will lay down on the side of the road and take 15min nap, then get back up and move. We are allowing ourselves 60hours to complete this, I feel that with Kyle and Stacey Amos who are very experienced in ultra events, Dan and Rebecca Elsener who will have medical duties over me and my wife Angel who has seen me suffer and whine at races and tells me to "suck it up and get going", I should be fine.

The hardest thing for me so far in this training is sloooooowing down. I have to re-train myself to just stay steady and not try and beat my previous times training. I will be doing multiple long training runs throughout this process and they key is to not injure myself in the process. As a competitor it has been hard going to the park and having people pass me that usually would not, but my stupid pride will get me hurt if I can't keep it in check. I just tell myself when someone blows by me, "you have to train smart, you have to train smart". I hope this cleared up somethings for a few of you new to long distance running. By the way, I am not the only crazy out there, we have over 50 one hundred mile races in the U.S. now. There is not a lot of glamour, crowds and prize money in ultramarathons, but they usually take place in some of the most beautiful areas of the country. Not to mention the lifelong inner pride you will carry forever the first time you hobble across the finish line at an ultra event. Please ask any questions you have, Semper Fi. Tony

Getting better everyday!

We have officially secured two "mini" fundraisers and two or three more are in the works! People are just amazing and continue to amaze me everyday with there generosity. The first of the two will be Tuesday June 8Th from 4pm to 10pm at "On the Border" in New Market Square Wichita, Kansas. They are going to donate 10% of sales that evening to our fundraiser, so the amount of money to be made is up to everyone showing up and eating. I will be there the entire time, On the Border is creating an event flyer that must be shown. I will post the flyer's on our fan page and here, but if you forget it don't worry, we will have a stack there for you!

The second event is for everyone to take part in and get a little exercise as well. On Saturday June 26Th from 6am to 3pm I will be doing a 9 hour training run at Maize South Middle School's track. We are asking everyone to come out and walk, jog or run sometime in that 9 hours, all we ask is you donate $1 a lap, all money going to the Wounded Warriors and toward our $25,000 goal. Since this is a non-profit event, please bring your own water and whatever else you may need, it will be HOT! As of now the US Marines, US Navy and US Army will be there joining us and bringing the future recruits of those respective services for a little workout. I can guarantee you this, nothing is more motivating than hearing a little cadence being yelled out while running. When this event gets closer we will post more details, we are working on the Wichita Fire Dept and Wichita Police Dept as well.

Training is going very well for me and the logistics of this event are just falling into place. My wife Angel, Dan Elsener, Kyle Amos and Tony Brown have already put in a ton of hours working on this and its months away. We are going to be holding two or three raffles throughout the summer at races here in Wichita and other towns. So far I have asked 12 national restaurant chains and 1 coffee chain for donations and gift cards, everyone of them with no hesitation at all said YES!!! Once we have a complete list we will post it. Thank you everyone and check back daily for updates. Semper Fi, Tony

Getting you up to speed

For some of you who do not know, we began this fundraiser officially just shy of 3 weeks ago. In that time we have received a sponsorship from Hooters of America, nearly $2000 in personal donations and have exceeded 350 people from nearly every state in the US on our face book fan page. Some of the organizations who have steeped up to assist in other ways are the American Legion Riders, 1st Marine Division Association and last but not least, we have received the personal endorsement of General Tommy Franks,US Army retired.

It has been quite an eventful 3 weeks so far and daily we receive inquiries from businesses. In the next few weeks I will explain how we plan to accomplish this mission and most of all the 224 mile run. Yes, it will be very difficult, but not impossible. The last thing we want to do as a team is put the focus on the run until the day of, our intentions are to raise awareness for the Wounded Warriors who need us and need us now. I will post stories, some will be very disturbing as to how these men and women have just been shoved back into society with little or no resources to help them get on with life as a Wounded Warrior. This is why Wounded Warrior Project is special to me and why our team is going to do all we can to reach our $25,000 goal. Many "mini" fundraising events are in the works and as soon as they are finalized we will spread the word. If any of you reading this has a suggestion or comment, please let us know. Thank you and Semper Fi, Tony

Intro: Welcome to our blog

I seem to have been given a talent to be able to endure running long distances. Up to this point I have never used that talent to help or better someone else, so I see this as the perfect opportunity to do so. Starting early summer I will do some all night training runs on the weekend and just try and increase what I do for 100 mile race preparation. My biggest fear is over training and hurting myself. So I will need to find that limit my body can endure in training and not exceed it. As for the event itself, unless both of my legs break in half; I will finish! Just running a marathon or even 100miles would not be truly sacrificing on my part, seeing that I have already done those things. Running this type of distance not only gets the attention of others, but will be the hardest thing I have ever done. There is absolutely no words to describe how awesome a Wounded Warrior is to me. Everyone who serves in the military sacrifices, but to come back home wounded or permanently injured in whatever way, has to be the ultimate sacrifice of the living. I feel that it is this country's job to honor these men and women. We have become so side tracked in this nation with everything else going on, you never hear about the Warriors anymore. We talk about the war and whether its right or wrong or the economy,healthcare, etc. The Wounded Warriors coming home get little to no attention. The harsh reality is we have men and women sitting at home right now that need us and need to know that we have not forgotten, nor will we ever forget the sacrifice they have made. My motivation is simply knowing that the money raised will go to help men and women from all branches of the military. Knowing the Wounded Warrior Project goes to the hospitals and see's these Warriors and offers assistance where they can. There is nothing worse than an individual sitting in a hospital room all alone after being injured in combat, we need to be there for them through the entire process and thats what Wounded Warrior Project does. Hopefully those who do not understand the hardships Wounded Warriors go through after they get home will be able to have a better understanding. These men and women are our responsibility. My biggest fear is that they will be forgotten and I am going to do my part to make sure this does not happen.
To date,over 34,000 members of our nation’s armed forces have been physically wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Studies estimate that more than 300,000 will suffer from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. These injuries are often devastating, leaving a formerly active young man or woman unable to care for themselves. While grateful for their return, the round-the-clock care required to treat these wounded warriors often falls on their families, giving caregivers no choice but to leave their jobs and forego healthcare of their own.
Tens of thousands of troops have been wounded in recent conflicts, many of them suffering traumatic brain injuries, amputations, and severe burns. The mission of Wounded Warrior Project is to honor and empower wounded warriors. WWP provides unique and direct programs and services that ease the burdens of the wounded and their families, aid in the recovery process, and aid in the transition back to civilian life.
Honoring the sacrifice of the those that have given so much. Please help me reach my goal of $25,000 for the Wounded Warriors of America.
At 2200 hours on Thursday September 9th, 2010, starting at the Nebraska Border and ending at the Kansas-Oklahoma border; Tony Clark will run across Kansas, along US Route 81 in 60 hours. Tony will be assisted with a rolling aid station and by local law enforcement. We will update training and progress of our mission regularly. Please show your support. Thank you!