What happens now?

We started the collection with the end-goal being our participation in Tjejvättern, we had a secondary goal of raising enough money to start a fund in our dad’s name, we didn’t reach that goal. The money that we have collected this far will be forwarded to an already existing fund where doctors working with reasearch on Amyloidosis can apply for grants. It’s better that the money is made available for that purpose rather than sitting on an account waiting for more money to come in.

We will also close the swedish bank account as this comes with a monthly fee, the paypal account will stay open for donations even in the future. The blog will still be here, I can’t make any promises on the pace of updates, since these two sisters haven’t been that great at it up until now.

I know that I’m still completing something that’s called the Göteborgs Klassikern this year, I have already done the 50k biking and I have a 1k swim and 10k run left to complete. If I can use this to raise some more money, I will, so will try to keep updating the progress, and there better be some progress!

The swim is on the 18th of August, I went swimming last week and managed 250m, in a pool – lets see how 1000m in a lake will work out.

Until then; thank you all for the support this far!

We did it!

D-day finally arrived and we woke up to a beautiful day, and still half asleep we drove from our summer-house to the city of Motala to start our day of biking. As we are sitting in the car, talking away first our mother and then my dear sister realized that they didn’t bring the keys for the little bike locks! I don’t know what thoughts ran through my mind, I think that most of them weren’t real nice at all and I was wondering if they would be able to start at all.

It turned out that our aunts boyfriend have potential as a bike thief, he managed to get both the locks open without a key using only different types of tools. I now understand why I get so many bikes stolen, if it’s so easy for an unexperienced (I hope) person to open the locks, then imagine how easy it is for someone who practice!

Thus, we all made it to the starting point, with bikes, and this how happy we looked then;

While biking there are so many places where you want to stop and take pictures, the nature is just so beautiful in this area, unfortunately we are there to complete a race rather than playing paparazzi so there aren’t that many pictures available. We have this one from the first depot stop, I think that we are still looking pretty fresh;

I don’t seem to have a photo of both of us after reaching the goal line, I promise that both of us did complete the full race! We have diplomas and all to prove it.

I was also amazed that my poor little cellphone had enough battery power to keep Endomondo going the whole time, and I was even more amazed to see that it didn’t actually measure 100k – a tad disappointing.

The whole affair was later in the evening celebrated with some bubbly at the summer-house;

And at least I have decided to do it again next year, it is a bit painful while you are at it, but damn you feel good once you reach that goal!

 

 

 

 

Feeling mighty pleased with myself!

Today was the day; time for the warm-up race before the big one in a few weeks.  It didn’t start that well as I broke my (my sisters, since I forgot to pack one of mine) water bottle on the ride to the starting point! The lid broke off so I couldn’t close it, and without a bottle holder I couldn’t transport it in that stage with actual water in it.As promised, here is a before picture, looking perky if I can say so myself; It didn’t take long into the race before I remembered one of the major differences between Göteborg and Malmö where I live, is the hills. Malmö is pretty flat, Göteborg isn’t! It was also pretty windy today, which didn’t help much and I was seriously questioning what I was doing. I did stick in there, with radio in my ears (bad sound since I forgot to pack my headphones as well) I biked on forcing myself to not read the start times of the people who passed me.

Almost half-way the first depot stop appeared and it was well met, without any water to drink during the first 25k’s and a strong gazing sun, I was thirsty and hungry. I went straight for the water, bananas and the yummy bun. Here my brother in-law also caught up with me, yes he did make it even if he was sick during the past week. His bike was much better than mine (my sisters, and I swear that the bike added 20 minutes to my ride today) so of course he caught up with me. Who looks better?

I did manage to complete the full 50k, and feel pretty good with myself. Based on the after picture I would say that I have more to give, and the 100k in a couple of weeks should be no issue at all!They were also kind enough to provide us with food once we finished, and I chewed some down, not too much though as we were going for Mothers Day dinner pretty much straight after.It was fun, I am pleased and proud, and seriously the in-law did hell of a race! kudos to him. The only thing is that the collection is going a bit slow, not anyone’s fault than me and my sisters. So I figured that if we manage to collect another 5000sek before the 8th of June I will bike the 100k dressed up in…you guy’s decide. Give me some suggestions, we post a poll, and donate! That way you get to see me on a bike in your choice of outfit, deal? 

Race Number

Yesterday I managed to go and fetch my race number for this Sundays race, I was also a very nice sister in-law and picked up my sisters hubbie’s number. However, he is a tad bit sick at the moment, and we all know that sick men are totally incapable of doing anything really, so lets see if he will make it on Sunday.If you happen to be in the Göteborg area this Sunday, and somewhere around the area where we bike, and happen to see number 1574, you are more than welcome to cheer me on!

Challenge update

I promised a friend of mine a present from down-under if she beat my sister and brother-in-law in this challenge, to keep sister dearest on her toes. I have to say that I wished she had a sponsor because she really rose to the challenge.

Here’s the status with four days to go and I have started keeping am eye out fir that present.

Here is your chance your chance to make us work for it!

So I have been thinking on how we can get a proper kick in the butt and get some action going, and today it came to me; an Endomondo Challenge. Starting today and a month forward you all have the chance to show us exactly how lazy and slow we are by joining the challenge and show us how much more than us you bike.

You can find the Endomondo challenge here!

And just to show that it already happened once, I put a picture of me after reaching the goal in last years race, see how fresh I look after biking 100k.

So, if you go biking on a regular basis and you use Endomondo, all you have to do is join the challenge and we will most probably get our asses kicked.

Don’t forget that you can also make a small contribution to our collection, more information is found here.

March 1st 2013

A few weeks ago we attended our dads funeral, today we are putting him in the ground, the weather is absolutely amazing and I strongly believe that dad managed to steal the remote control and tuned in to the blue skies channel.

At this point, I will have to admit defeat in yet another challenge. I got one extra week due to a session of penicillin and then never got around to getting on the bike. I will say that it’s a good thing that I loose, since my sister doesn’t seem to pay up when she does (and ouch, I will get into trouble for that comment). Since the race is getting closer, and I will do one already in May, we need to get going with working out. Any suggestions for challenges and encouragement will be highly appreciated!

Now the weather is starting to get a bit better, so biking outdoors is back on the table. Excellent for me as I have cancelled my gym membership, basis that I never went and it felt like a waste of money, money better spent in other areas.

Talking about money, I have been a bit slow on updating incoming donations lately mostly because there has been a slow-down and we need something done about that. I will not cease to be amazed of how generous people have been and I hope that they will continue to be, I also realize that it will take an effort from our point. What do you think?

Wow, wow, wow!

As mentioned we added an account number in our dads obituary in case people felt like donating, and apparently they did. We got two more contributions already🙂

Since I also happen to have some spare time on my hands, and I also happen to love charts, I made one;

Dark green is donations received and light green is our goal, i.e. we want to see the whole bar turn dark green! This is measured in Swedish crowns, and the total donations are now shown in both euros and swedish crowns.

Let me know if it all gets to confusing, and I change it back to normal! In the meant time, keep sharing the blog and Facebook page to help cheer us on! And if you feel to share your money click here to find information on how to do just that!

The sister on sick leave

Just because I am on sick leave from the biking challenge, it doesn’t mean that I am doing nothing. My little brain is working real hard on trying to figure out more ways of raising money, and I have come up with at least one idea (what it is you will find out in a near future). I am also chasing people to help us put the word out there by pressing like on the Facebook page, 65 this far, and spread the word about this blog.

By the end of the day, raising enough money to start a memorial fund for our dad isn’t enough. If no one knows about the disease then how would anyone know to apply for grants from the fund in order to do research? So this is also about getting the word out there, that there is an evil disease out there that can kill, the more people who hear about it the better! Thus, even if you don’t have any money to share, your like on the Facebook page, or you sharing the blog posts that we put on the blog, mean just as much!

One of the things that I am doing is chasing famous people on twitter and that have blogs of their own, to get them to spread the word. I know it’s a long shot and that they get queries from so many people, however if I don’t try it wont happen!

Do you have any good ideas on what we can do to get more attention to the blog? Or do you have any good ideas on how we can raise more money?

I will also continue the chase of pictures of me and my sister together, I think it would be nice for everyone to know who is behind this blog, especially the people that now support us but have never met us in person. Here is one for example, I am the one on the left!

200 000 swedish crowns, you think we can do it?

As our father has now passed away the collection has changed it’s form a bit. We would now like to create a memorial fund in our dad’s name, however after some investigation into the subject we realized that we need at least 200 000 Swedish crowns (about €23000) for it to make sense. What can one say? Now we have a goal to work towards!

We have decided that we are going to make a try for it, and see if we can actually do it, if we can’t then the money will as previously stated go to the already existing fund. To help us out a little bit, we have opened something called a postgiro account, which is a Swedish payment service, so if you are living in Sweden you can transfer money to PG 1650908-5 rather than using the PayPal option for donations. The account will also be mentioned in our dads obituary, it’s quite common in Sweden to ask people to donate rather than buying flowers when someone passes due to a disease where more research.

Wish us luck!