IOL Strength and Conditioning

Dave and I went to Oregon to visit Bill and Judy Pearl in the fall of 2005, and recorded a conversation between Dave and Bill that I made into a booklet to include with the Pearl/Draper Bash 2005 Seminar DVD. Today I formatted the transcript for pdf and kindle, added some of my favorite images of the guys, and uploaded it for sale as a benefit for our Mandy Trept fund.

In either format, this 20-page pdf (13,000 words) sells for $3.49. 100% of the proceeds will be deposited into our fund to help out with Mandy’s rent for a couple of months and the family travel costs while she’s in the Bakersfield trauma center.

It’s a donation, but I think you’re going to get a kick out of the conversation, too. I sure did.

Here are the links:

Via pdf from davedraper.com

Via Amazon Kindle

Here’s the Paypal link to make a direct deposit of any amount. We’ll close this in a week and mail the check next Tuesday.

Last weekend a group of IronOnline forum friends traveled to Bakersfield, California, for in the Volkslauf Mud Run, a Marine Corp Toys for Tots charity obstacle course. We had a half-dozen participants, and an equal number of cheerful supporters who got especially cheerful about bystanding as we watched our friends struggle through the mud and over some pretty difficult obstacles.

Mark, Lori, Bob

About noon as the next to last of our group finished the course and found dry shoes, we set off to catch up with our final participant, Mandy Trept. An hour later, Dan Martin, the fire captain traveling with us, found the medical tent and discovered she had been med-evaced to a nearby trauma center. Mandy had fallen coming over the top of a 16-foot ladder obstacle and is partially paralyzed from a neck injury. The surgeon is unable to foresee how her recovery might go. He did give a hopeful signal after Saturday night’s surgery, but again said he didn’t know if it meant anything more than that.

Mark, Lori, Mandy, Bob

From our man on the ground, Kyle Estle:

“A local group has been formed to coordinate things for the family while they are here. There is a donor willing to allow the family use of their 5th wheel and hospital administration has allowed them to park the vehicle on hospital grounds so the family can be close.

“A Facebook group has been formed that is taking in donations and updating status as things progress. If you are on Facebook, please join Miles for Mandy.

“A benefit run is in the planning stages, spearheaded by Amy Villicano. The Bakersfield Track Club has been contacted about helping with organizing and coordinating the run. Once a date is set they will help advertise the cause as well. Amy did an interview with a local television station this morning, which will air on the local news this evening. The more eyes we get on this cause, the better.

“There are some really good people involved right now and we have momentum. I encourage all of our brothers and sisters in iron to do what you can, prayers and of course donations are always welcome.”

After the ICU stay, it will be several months before it’s clear what kind of recovery she can expect. Once she’s stable, they’ll figure out how to get her back to her home in Texas for her rehab.

Here’s the local Bakersfield TV coverage about her, and here’s the newspaper article about her accident in the Bakersfield paper. They seem to be continuing the coverage, so you can check in there for the latest details.

We’ve created a fund to cover Mandy’s family’s travel costs, hotel and to pay a couple of month’s rent for Mandy’s new apartment since she won’t be working while she’s recovering. The fund is growing, close to $5,000 this morning. It would be wonderful to see this fund grow not from big donations, but from an outpouring of the affection of our IronOnline group… small contributions we can afford, and that will make us all part of the only thing we can do now: support her and her family during this crisis.

This is our IronOnline Mandy Fund link via paypal. Please make a small donation so we can tell her a zillion people helped, and so you’ll know you were a part of this instead of a bystander. No contribution is too small; please don’t be concerned about the size of the donation… that’s not the point. If you’d prefer to mail a check, please send that to me at Laree Draper, P O Box 1335, Aptos, CA 95001, and I’ll merge it with the paypal fund before sending off the check, which I’d like to do on Monday, October 24th.

I wish there was something more we could do. For now, prayer and good thoughts,  a donation to help the family with travel costs — and let’s pay Mandy’s rent for a couple of months, too — a post here in her training log or over on her facebook page… she and her family will appreciate whatever you’d like to do to express your support.

The other thing we can do right now is send a card. Let’s make the ICU staff wonder who this famous Mandy is, shall we? No flowers or phone calls are allowed in the ICU, where she’s expected to be for about two weeks, but Mandy’s family can read her our cards and she’ll know we’re thinking about her, and that we care. She’s at:

Mandy Trept, C/O ICU
Kern Medical Center
1700 Mt. Vernon Ave
Bakersfield, CA 93306

Each year around the middle of October, our IronOnline forum members band together to challenge each other to get through the holiday season with our training and diets intact. This year’s Year-End Challenge, in which everyone selects their own goal for the next 10 weeks, begins Monday; Mandy was planning her challenge to get through Dan John’s Mass Made Simple.Certainly you can guess we’re dedicating this year’s challenge to Mandy, and we’re jumpstarting the Challenge with a No Junk-Food Monday, with the financial savings dedicated to Mandy. Your assignment, should you feel challenged, is to skip some treat you normally eat or drink, and PayPal the few dollars over to the Mandy Fund. I think a latte’s about $3.50; that draft you normally get is gonna cost you a little more…. and, guess what… you don’t even get to drink it.

When she wakes up over the next few days, we want her to know she’s not completely alone, that we’re supporting her and her family as she begins her long rehab.

What you can do:

1: Join the Challenge

2: Jumpstart the Challenge and contribute the $5 you saved… or the $20 for you twice-daily latte and bagel gluttons

3: Send a card. Her sister’s going to cover her ICU wall with cards; we’re looking for cards from every state in the US, and every country we can find someone willing to buy an international postage stamp.

4: Send some bucks. We’ve got about $5,000 collected from the IronOnline group, and we’d like to double that as we go wider with this. The goal is to pay her rent for a couple of months, pay the family’s travel expenses and build a ramp or whatever accessibility needs she’ll have during her rehab. Help if you can, or send a card instead if money’s tight. Or dedicate your year-end training to Mandy and hit it hard. That’s plenty good!

5: You can also drop a note in her IronOnline training log, or if you’re on Facebook, post a note there. The event photos are here in IronOnline, or here on Facebook (identical photos, use whichever is easiest for you).

6. Visit the www.milesformandy.com site for regular updates, and news about the Bakersfield Walk/Run Benefit called Miles for Mandy (see Miles for Mandy facebook group, too), tentatively scheduled for mid-December. There may be a sister walk/run in Dallas the same day.

Mandy at Bash 2010

Kick in for Mandy.