It's been about 3 weeks since I last added an entry here. What's happened in that time? The most significant thing is that Nipun Mehta -- founder of CharityFocus, good friend of mine, and all-around amazing guy -- sent out a mass email to all PledgePage users, soliciting donations and guestbook entries on my behalf. That email resulted in a flood of guestbook entries from people I don't even know from all over the world who have used PledgePage to raise money for various good causes. It was a touching response -- bringing home to me once again that building PledgePage and becoming associated with CharityFocus is the most meaningful thing I've ever done in my professional life. Thanks to everyone who responded to Nipun's email and signed my guestbook or contributed to my cause. And thanks to you, Nipun and CharityFocus, for breathing new life into PledgePage.

Other developments are that I have now done two more long runs, one of 16 miles and one, yesterday, of 19. Yesterday's run along the East Bay waterfront from Berkeley to Richmond and back was particularly painful. I have not been training much at all during the week and have been trying to get by solely on the long weekend runs. That is not a good training strategy. I can feel that I'm underprepared right now based on how difficult these long runs have been. I have to step it up in the next week or two.

Finally, I still haven't pinged a lot of my friends and family for contributions, so I'm going to do that today. I hope this last fundraising push will help me reach my goal of $5000.