|
On September 11, 2001, Mark Bingham became
a national hero - as a passenger on United Flight 93 who gave his life to divert
the hijacked plane from a collision course with the White House.
On September 11, 2002, a group of Mark's closest friends started Team Bingham, an
organization devoted to preserving the spirit and memory of Mark Bingham - a natural
born leader, a fierce rugby player, a gifted business owner, and also a gay man whose
story is now helping to dispel old stereotypes and effect social change - while remembering
the thousands of brave men and women who perished that day.
Team Bingham: Leading the Charge
Are you kidding me? You're running over 60 miles?
I'm completely serious. :-) I'll be running 62.2 miles. That's like running two marathons,
one after the other, plus another ten miles tacked on the end.
Why on earth would you do that?! :-)
I'm raising money for Team Bingham, a September 11 related non-profit I helped to
start almost three years ago. In selecting a way to ask for support from people I
know, I wanted to do something on the same scale as what we're doing with Team Bingham.
A 62 mile race (100 kilometers) seemed right to me.
Who was Mark Bingham?
Mark Bingham was a hero of September 11, a passenger on Flight 93 who died trying
to take back the plane from the terrorists who hijacked it. Before September 11,
Mark Bingham was a successful PR executive who started and ran his own PR agency.
Posthumously, he was selected as the Advocate's Man of the Year for 2001.
I met Mark in 1989, when we were students at UC Berkeley. We joined a fraternity
at the same time, and became roommates. From then until his death he was one of my
closest friends.
What does Team Bingham do?
Team Bingham was founded to promote the values Mark demonstrated in life: leadership,
heroism, sociability, and teamwork. Toward this:
* We've developed the Mark Bingham Leadership Fund to award scholarships to student
leaders at UC Berkeley with demonstrated financial need. We've raised $100,000 so
far and have given awards each of the past two springs to some awesome kids at Berkeley.
* We have a long-term goal of developing a scholarship open to a nationwide audience
of gay athletes. (Mark was both gay and an athlete; a starter on the US championship
rugby team at Berkeley.)
* We're currently working to develop the
"Run To Remember", a 5k walk/10k run to memorialize the heroism on September
11, with the inaugural run targeted for San Francisco on Sep 11, 2005.
Who is Team Bingham?
Team Bingham was founded by Mark's family and friends, and now includes others who
did not know Mark but are inspired by his story and the goals of Team Bingham.
Our board members hail from a variety of professions - among them, technology, public
relations, media, finance, law - and are located in Seattle, New York, and the San
Francisco Bay Area. We volunteer our time and effort. The heart of Team Bingham is
Mark's mom,
Alice Hoglan.
Team Bingham is a 501(c)3 nonprofit registered with the IRS. All donations to Team
Bingham are 100% tax deductible.
Tell me about the race you'll be running.
The name of the race is the "Where's
Waldo", it's run near Waldo Lake in Oregon. It's actually a much tougher race
than the distance alone suggests. :-) The course includes ascents and descents of
three mountains in the Willamette Ski Area: Fuji, the Twins, and Maiden Peak. The
total elevation gain for the race is 11,600 feet. (As one reference
point for comparison, that's a bit more than the altitude gain on Mt. Everest, from
base camp to the summit.) The race is run at high-ish altitude, averaging close to
6000 feet. The temperatures during the race can range from the 20s to the 90s.
This is the third year the race has been run. Over the first two years, only half
of the runners have actually finished the race. By way of comparison, the comparable
figure for a marathon, or even a difficult 50k, is over 90% of runners completing
the race. Anyway, while the statistics are against me, I intend to beat the statistics
& to finish this race. :-) My plan for the race has me finishing in just under
18 hours.
More info on the race here.
How do you train for something like this?
I've been running a lot. :-) Highlights so far:
* In early May I ran my first 50k race, on a brutally hilly course near Corvallis,
OR. My time for the race was 7 hours, 43 minutes.
* In early July I ran another 50k race.
I felt great during the race, and cut an hour off my time from the 50k in May. The
next day, I felt good enough to drive down to Mt. Rainier and hike up to Camp Muir
with a friend.
* On Aug 1, I ran the SF marathon, with
just two hours of sleep - I'd been out on the town in SF the night before, celebrating
my birthday with friends there. :-)
Training for this has been incredibly engrossing.
So for those who haven't heard from me in a little while, now you know why :-) During
the week, I typically run Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I do long runs on Saturday
and Sunday, which, with travel, running, and recovery, has taken up most of my weekends
this spring and summer.
Naturally (and sadly!) I've had to cut back on the wine tastings and wine dinners
that are usually a big part of my week and especially my summers. I've learned a
lot about sports nutrition, and have almost doubled what I eat. For carbo-loading
dinners, I've eaten as much as four pounds of risotto. It's not very comfortable
:-) but it's helped my running a lot. I am so, so tired of eating oatmeal for breakfast
:-) which I do for extra carbs.
I've learned to run at night, in pitch darkness,
on hilly trails in the woods, a skill I'll need for the upcoming race. I've had a
couple sessions with a running coach - by good fortune and coincidence, the best
trail runner in the US lives in Seattle and has a coaching practice. I've mostly
recovered from a knee injury I got training in May, shortly after my first 50k in
Corvallis. Now, I find that the hardest part is actually learning to run at a pace
slow enough that I can maintain it for 18 hours.
How can I help?
There are several ways you can help.
* Race crew. It would be really great to have a race crew (one or more people) to
support me during the race. The gist of this is to drive and hike to the various
aid stations during the race and help me when I arrive there, after working with
me in advance to coordinate the food, water, clothing, and equipment that I'll need
at each stage of the race. I'll begin the race at 3am and will finish between 8pm
and 9pm. It's a long day for me, so getting the logistics of food, drink, and clothing
will be essential for me to finish the race.
No prior experience necessary to help with this. But you'd need to be super reliable,
and be able to hike 3 miles on moderate hills. Let me know if you're interested,
and I can provide more details. It'd be great to have help with this, and it's an
*incredible* morale boost to
see a friendly face during the run.
Note to my running friends: the race allows pacers to accompany runners beginning
at any aid station after mile 33. So if any of you would like to run the part of
this with me - the final 7, 11, 16 or more miles - that would be awesome. No need
to worry about "keeping up" since I'll be going very slow at that point.
* Get involved with Team Bingham. Let me know if you're interested in helping out.
There's a lot to be done...! Especially in coming months as we lay the groundwork
for the Run to Remember.
* Donate to Team Bingham. The simplest way, of course, is to contribute money to
Team Bingham. You can send a check, payable to Team Bingham at:
Team Bingham Donations
2249 W. Lake Sammamish Pkwy SE
Bellevue, WA 98008
If you work at a company that provides matching gifts for charitable donations, let
me know and I can provide you our Federal Tax ID number, and any other info that
you
need.
Of course, if you have friends, or know of organizations that would be interested
in supporting Team Bingham, please feel free to forward this mail to them.
Thanks for your support. Anything you can do would really mean a lot to me.
My email is: jeffsta@microsoft.com.
News: We just returned from San Diego and The ROCK 'N' ROLL Marathon! All 11
members of Team Bingham made it to the finish line, including EIGHT first time marathoners,
thanks to Team Coach
James Jay Ridgeway of PacWest Athletics.
Alice Hoglan, wearing race bib number 911, helped launch the event, bringing several
thousand runners to tears (article courtesy of the San Diego Union-Tribune):
|
