Tapering for New Jersey... a sad turn of events

Dolores "Mingah" Quinlivan -
 An absolute stunner.  I will miss
her so much.

***Please note: The St. Paddy's Fundraiser for the Cindy Sherwin Memorial Playground is postponed until April due to a family emergency.  I will post the new date as soon as it is secured***

I am officially tapering for the New Jersey Ultra Festival.  I have not posted in awhile.  I had been on vacation for a week and while we were away my beloved grandmother, Mingah, had a stroke.  She passed away this Sunday morning after days of being surrounded by our big Irish family.

It just hasn't felt right to post lately but I have received so much support from people on this project that I know I need to.  For the first time in my training I have begun to feel (dare I say it without jinxing myself) confident.  Confident that I have put in a lot of miles, more than most training plans suggest, have done a successful 50 mile training run and that barring an injury or insane mental struggle that I simply can't combat... I have a good chance of finishing this race.

This past week I ran a bunch of 10 miles and was scheduled to run a 30 on Saturday and a 30 on Sunday.  Saturday was fine but 2 or so miles into my Sunday run I got the news about Mingah and the run was never completed.  Rather than stress about it, I'm going to be confident in the rest of my training, primarily because I have no choice and the negativity is not going to help at this point.  I have focused so much on running this for Cindy and to build the Cindy playground and now I will be running for Mingah too - she was always so incredibly support of me.  The best news in all of this is that The Cindy Sherwin Memorial playground has far surpassed the fundraising goal:

We have so far raised $30,630, plus have an additional committed $15,000 in corporate donations and still have the fundraiser with excellent silent auction items ranging in value from $100 - $6000.  We are on pace to raise around $50,000 for the playground.

I am so overwhelmed by all the support for this project and I know Cindy would be so amazed all this is being done in her memory.  My task is now to focus (which I'm finding really hard given everything else going on) to mentally prepare, to run and to get all of the logistics for this race handled.  I will be posting more on details later - but for now, thank you to all the supporters of this project.