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Jul 11, 2012    |      0 comments

Enter: Team FLUID!

Through a website called Hookit.com, I was able to get “hooked up” with a sponsorship from FLUID Recovery! So here it is, my first sponsorship with Team FLUID. It’s not a full sponsorship where they get to pay for my races or anything like that. Let’s be real, I’m not an elite athlete, or even win races under the age groupers, but I’m glad it’s from a brand I love, and I actually use their recovery products. This sponsorship will get me a pretty huge discount on their products to encourage me to use it more and also venture out to their other products as well. Hopefully with more blog posts, tweets, and status updates of my adventures with FLUID, I can get more support from there. For now, this is a great start! If you use them, and want some discounts, I can get them for you! Just email me, tweet me, or leave comments! I’ll hook you up!

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Jul 9, 2012    |      0 comments

Etch-A-Swim: Return of Sharktopus

Luckily no sightings of sharks, or even Sharktopus yesterday out in our Santa Monica / Venice Beach open water swim. As always, my open water swim skills sucks so bad that I brought out my inner Etch-A-Sketch in the ocean. As you can see above, what I was REALLY trying to do was to draw Sharktopus! Ok, there’s some points on there that shows I went 180 and swam backwards. Although I would still believe that I did, the GPS Satellites were lost on certain points and lost track. Still, very crooked, very terrible. Yes, I have to work on my sighting. Bad enough that I’m due for new contact lenses. What? Sight the pier and ferris wheel? Can’t see that! Swimming south was fine because I could see the shore every time I took a breath on my left side, and I think I kept up with the pack for a good distance.

Towards the end of that first half though, the current seemed strong and the water got choppy, and it really took me off course! There were many times (as usual), that I was alone. I tried not to panic because it IS scary out there. It’s a good thing the water out there isn’t very clear, I wouldn’t want to know how deep I am out there, or if there are any creatures below me. I’d rather not know! Eventually, I made it to my destination. Coach Holly and Jason were calling me back in because we were running out of time, plus I pretty much swam MORE than the planned distance at that point!

After the swim was a nice 5 mile run up the strand, then up Ocean Blvd and back. We also had a nice pot-luck/picnic near our starting point, which was an amazing rest from a pretty big workout weekend.

Below, at the picnic, Bill and I compared our maps on our Garmins. I don’t know what’s crazier, that my swim was that crooked, or that Bill was able to swim a straight line, to and from, and pretty much take that same exact route back! Amazing!

Jul 2, 2012    |      0 comments

TNT Fundraiser: Game of Four

Yesterday, Holly and I hosted “Game of Four“, which was a Connect Four tournament for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training. It was all to raise funds for our training for Ironman Canada in a few months. West 4th / Jane, a usual host for our MAN v BAR pub crawl fundraiser, was very happy to help us out. They usually have these types of tournaments, so all the board games were provided. A TNT teammate from the tri team, Dana, also hooked me up with marketing and documentation on when she did the exact same event a few months ago. We had a bunch of door & opportunity drawing prizes, such as movies, video games, bike apparel, running shoes, concert tickets to the Wiltern and The Roxy in Hollywood. We had a pretty good turnout (not as much as MAN v BAR), but enough to have a good 4 hours of drinking and playing fun. We also gave away West 4th / Jane gift certificates and Connect Four board games. I have to admit, we were a bit tired from the morning’s practice, but we powered through for what we thought was a successful event!

View our event photos!

May 14, 2012    |      0 comments

Sponsor a LIVESTRONG Mile

Not many people know that I will technically be teammates with Lance Armstrong (he’s racing too) in a few weeks for the Ironman Hawaii 70.3 triathlon. After years of fundraising for TNT (which I still am for Ironman Canada), I decided to race for Team LIVESTRONG, another great organization for the fight against cancer.

Since Sponsor-A-Mile worked so well last year for Vineman in getting me to that finish line, I decided to do it for this race. What I will do is bring this list with me (except on the swim, of course), and each mile that I pass, I’ll do it for you donors, or in honor of anyone you choose.

To Sponsor-A-Mile, please go to my LIVESTRONG Donation Page http://laf.livestrong.org/goto/marvin (NOT on the TNT donation page) and donate a minimum $5 for each mile. In the personal note of the donation page, let me know what mile(s) you want, or email me at mtabangay@gmail.com. In return, I’ll send you a yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet as a thanks!

Please Sponsor a LIVESTRONG Mile
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May 7, 2012    |      0 comments

Etch-A-Swim: Wildflower Long Course Swim

Even though I shaved off 8:15 off my Wildflower swim time from last year, imagine if I actually swam straight! Here’s more of my swim bloopers, but at least I know what I need to work on these next few months! (red = my swim, dotted blue = what I was supposed to do)

May 3, 2012    |      0 comments

Donation Wars Challenge

A few weeks ago, our team had our annual OC to San Diego ride and I had an initial fundraising goal of $80 for that week, for the 80 miles biked. Donations came in throughout the day by my friends and family and eventually surpassed 80, so I thought, “What if the total donation amount can top the total number of miles trained that week?” Result? $106 fundraised but 103 miles trained. You won in that round.

The following week, I didn’t announce that same “challenge” to anyone, plus it was a crazy workweek then I had to go out of town. Result? $35 fundraised, but only 16 miles trained (oops! hey, I was busy!). You won again.

What now? Well, another week is upon us. Swam on Tuesday, busy these past few days, but a big weekend is coming up. With some warmup and tune up miles prior, Wildflower Long Course Triathlon is 1.2 miles, 56 bike, then 13.1 run. I’m estimating another 80 mile week.

So I challenge YOU… readers of my blog, friends, family, Twitter followers, everyone. Every week, now until my race at the end of August. Can your donations top the number of miles trained? Every week I’ll update with graphs and estimated mileage goals.

0-2 is my record, and if by the end of August, the number of Donation weeks won is more than Mileage weeks, then I’ll __________________. That hasn’t been determined yet, but suggestions only from donors accepted, then I’ll have the donors vote too. I just had to get this idea out before the big race this weekend.

So what are you waiting for? Please visit my fundraising page and donate now, or click Donate in the upper right column of this page. Thank you! All donations support LLS, so it’s a win-win!

Apr 23, 2012    |      0 comments

Anaheim to San Diego Ride

Last Saturday the team did our annual San Diego ride, which I looked forward to every time. We met at the usual Anaheim Stadium Amtrak station parking lot where we came back to after a train ride back up. Less than a year has past and I felt nothing but excitement leading up to it. It was a major contrast from last year where I honestly felt scared. Just the sound of it sounded daunting – “We’re biking to San Diego.” What?!?

We started to ride towards the coast by using the river path. It was nice and smooth with rollers under bridges all throughout. I remember last year I was pretty nervous because there was no fence dividing us and the descent into a dry concrete river. It wasn’t much of a concern this year, so I enjoyed the whole bit!
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