After months of hard work and collaboration amongst Leo, Dan, Andrew, Sean, Joshua, and I Train for Humanity formally launched last Tuesday, September 9, 2008.

Instead of using a traditional press release we decided to use the internet and social media to begin spreading the word about our humanitarian organization. At 7:00am last Tuesday the blog posts went up on our respective sites and the twitter messages started flying.

Overall the launch went fairly well. The only snafu; my internet went down on 4:00pm on the day of the launch and then I only had intermittent access for the next three days following…certainly not the best strategy when you are relying on the web to get your message out so we lost a little momentum.

However, we still remain highly optimistic that this innovative model of "everyday athletes" in training to raise funds and awareness for humanitarian crises will be successful.

How did we do after one week?

Technical Stuff

Train for Humanity page views - 9,998

Bounce rate - 44%

Average time on site - 2 minutes 10 seconds

Funds Raised

$800.00

Training completed by TFH Participants for the dates Sept 8, 2008 to Sept 15, 2008

Mark - participating in the Miami Man Olympic Distance Triathlon on November 9th.

Monday - swim 1/2hour, run 40 minutes

Tuesday - launch day = nothing

Wednesday - rain, thunder, & lightening = nothing

Thursday - bike 1 hour, run 40minutes

Friday - swim 1/2 hour

Saturday swim 1/2hour, bike 1 1/2 hours, run speed work 1/2hour

Dan - training for the Niagara Falls half marathon on October 26th.

I’ve been recovering from a couple of injuries, so I’ve been easing gradually back into the running. This last week I did a few short runs in the 20-30 minute range, but added some yoga and weight work which really seemed to help.

I’m actually feeling pretty good, but I’ll have definitely have to pick up the mileage!

Leo - competing in the Honolulu marathon on December 14th.

Monday - ran 7 miles

Tuesday - ran 2.5 miles, did heavy yardwork, strength training

Wednesday - ran 8 miles

Friday - long run 14 miles

Saturday - bodyweight strength training

Monday - ran 7.5 miles w/ intervals

We have a guest post coming up later in the week from Susan Burgess-Lent, Program Director with Darfur Peace & Development, and also in the works is a discussion with Chris Brogan about how non-profits and NGOs can best use social media. If you are interested in helping to Spread the Word or Sponsoring one of us, we greatly appreciate your support.