Now that I’ve finished a full marathon (and even run a half marathon since), it’s time to re-focus and chase after new goals. As I mentioned a week ago, I took week 5 of 2014 off from working out to heal my body. This worked out pretty well. In week 6, I slowly got back at it. In a little less than 8 weeks, I’ll be running in the Hollywood Half Marathon. Four weeks later, the OC Half Marathon (although I still have to register for that one). My goal time for each race is to get down to a 2 hour, 30 minute half marathon time in order to improve my placement for the Disneyland Half Marathon at the end of summer. So, I’ve developed a plan to hopefully get me there. That all started this week…

It all started with running just 3 miles on Tuesday. It was a rather slow 3 miles due to lots of red traffic lights and some technical difficulties from dropping my phone. I didn’t know it, but my Nike Plus App continued running even while I put my phone back together. That cost me a little more than a minute. Much to mu surprise, by the time I got the app back up and running, over a minute had passed. Yikes. Oh well, I realized that this was a run just to get me back moving. I ran in my Surf City USA Half Marathon race shirt. It’s a nice bright color. Perfect for nighttime running.

On Thursday, I ran 4 miles. Even thought the GPS stopped working properly in the first mile, I know the route and know where 4 miles ends. When I first got notification that the GPS wasn’t working, I decided to keep on going and see how bad it was. Well, my first big indicator was where the app said the end of the second mile was. As I said, I know this route pretty well and know where the end of the second mile should be. According to the app, I still had another 0.15 miles to go at that point. Grr. I got a phone call towards the end of the third mile and that seemed to really freak out the app. When I got to the finish of what I knew was 4 miles, the app read 2.67 miles in around 30 minutes. I should mention that I was out at least 45 minutes, if not longer. So, I have no idea what my stats were for this run. Crazy.

On Saturday, I finished 6 miles (2 loops of the Rose Bowl). The fun part of this run was that the first 3 were finished with my friend Emmanuel, his wife Hannah and my wife.

Emmanuel is going to join Brooke and I for the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K Family Fun Run at the end of March! The date of the race doesn’t work well for his wife. So, she won’t be able to join us. So, we’ve been talking about getting together for a run/walk workout. Emmanuel and Hannah joined Brooke and I for the first loop around the Rose Bowl. I told him that the loop we finished will be harder than the 5K race. I didn’t want to push him too much. So, we walked most of the loop. However, in the last mile, he wanted to see what my intervals felt like. So, for the last mile, we did the intervals while the ladies just power walked it out. It was so much fun to be able to run with friends…even if we walked most of the time. After Emmanuel and Hannah left, Brooke and power walked the last lap. While this wasn’t the most difficult of workouts, I viewed it as just finishing out the week to get me back out and going. This coming week will be the first one where I get back to pushing harder.

While I’m sure this doesn’t count as really working out, Brooke and I joined one of Brooke’s sisters for 18 holes of miniature golf on Sunday. We had a blast making our way around the course. It ended up being one of my best rounds of miniature golf ever as I finished under par!

As I’m sure you know, Friday was Valentines Day. Brooke and I opted for dinner at home…

This was followed by a movie Brooke had recorded on the Hallmark Channel. Yes, I have no problems watching the Chick flicks with the wife. Our Valentines celebrating didn’t end there.

After running around the Rose Bowl on Saturday, we headed out to see Endless Love at the theatre. For a chick flick, it wasn’t too bad.

Then, it was time for dinner at Café Bizou in Old Town Pasadena. So, in celebrating Valentines Day we had a dinner and a movie at home on Friday and a movie and dinner out on Saturday. It was fun times!

By the way, I’ve just got to mention how much I love my church. I mean with a name like Mosaic, you know we’re pretty artistic. However, it’s also a pretty unconventional church. We have separate gatherings at various locations in Southern California…Hollywood, Whittier, the South Bay, San Diego, and in Downtown Los Angeles at the LA Live. Most of the time, we’ll meet at the Club Nokia on Sunday mornings. However, since we are renters, we sometimes have to relocate. So, the past couple weeks, we’ve met at the Conga Room. Church at the Conga Room. How cool is that?

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentines Day (or Single Awareness Day) and President’s Day weekend. Even though this counts towards week 7, Brooke and I started off the day off by hitting up our gym. Week 7 is off to a great start!

What goals are you pursuing right now?