There are so many cool things I’ve seen this week that I just had to highlight some of it on the blog. Since none of it groups together nicely, I can only title this blog “Thursday Randomness.” It’s the only thing that fits.

First up…last night I ran with my friend Emmanuel. I don’t know if you remember, but we did a training run around the Rose Bowl a few weeks ago…

Emmanuel and my wife will be running with me at the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K next Saturday (3/29/14). The picture above was from our first run together with my wife and his. He’s been wanting to do a training run with me. Last night, it worked out that we could run together. So, I only did a 5K last night (instead of my planned 6 miles). That’s okay. It was a different experience for me. I’ve never had a real training run with other people before. When we got together at the Rose Bowl, it was mostly a walk and I didn’t push very hard. This time around, we did a training that resembled what I normally do. We did the 1 minute run/1 minute walk intervals the entire way. So, Emmanuel got a real taste of what I’m doing and he did really well. I wasn’t sure how the training run would go beforehand. But Emmanuel did great! We finished right at a 12 minute per mile average. Considering how many traffic lights we hit, it’s not a bad pace. I let him know that the 5K we’re doing next weekend will be much easier and much flatter than we had just finished. Because this was my first training run with a friend, I felt so subconscious of my breathing. I didn’t want to appear to be struggling. Sometimes, in training, I’ll not be doing great with breathing and the grunts will come out. My walk breaks give me the chance to recover. But, since I had someone I knew with me, I was worried about that. Thankfully, no grunting. Also, it was strange to be running without music. However, he had fun talking along the way. So, it was a good night. I decided to end my running at the 5K mark because we got out a little later than I’m used to and I didn’t want to be out another 30-40 minutes.

I saw this today and just thought it was awesome. So, I had to share. The Rex running the Princess Half Marathon. Too funny!

Another cool thing from this morning…I got an email from the Rock n Roll Los Angeles Half Marathon to let me know that this year, they are giving fans the opportunity to design this year’s finishers medal! How cool is that? You can find out more about that here.

Here are the rules:

• The name of the event (Rock ‘n’ Roll Los Angeles Halloween Half Marathon), benefiting charity (ASPCA), & the event date (October 26, 2014) must be included
• The medal design must be Halloween themed
• Designs may be submitted in any format (written description, drawing, graphic design, etc.)

The Winning Design:

Everyone is a winner! Participate by submitting a design to designyourbling@competitorgroup.com for the 2014 Official Finisher’s Medal, and receive a online discount code* for $10 off a domestic Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series race in 2014**.

The Design Your Bling contest winner will receive a comp entry to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Los Angeles Halloween Half Marathon benefiting the ASPCA, and a chance to wear the bling they designed!

Way to go Competitor and the Rock n Roll Marathon Series!

This week, I’ve been reading about a few bloggers who reached some very impressive results this past weekend. First up, I want to extend a big congrats to Pam from We Run Disney. This past weekend, she ran a Boston Qualifying time at the 2014 Quintiles Marathon. You can (and should) read about her race here. Included in this report is one of the best finishing photos ever that her husband captured. Earlier the same day, Pam’s daughter, Christine (who also writes at We Run Disney) set a new half marathon PR at the 2014 Shamrock Half Marathon. You can read about that race here. It was quite the weekend for the We Run Disney ladies! The 2014 Shamrock Half Marathon was also a PR race for Sarah of the Sparkly Runner blog. Check out her race recap here. Sarah’s race recap connects with me as she was shooting for the same half marathon PR time as me. I’m hoping that I’ll hit that PR by the 4th of May.

Another blog I want to highlight was this one from Brian who writes the Pavement Runner blog. In this blog, he gives you photos from the upcoming Rock n Roll San Francisco Half Marathon course. Looking at the photos reminds me of my two training runs in San Francisco that I had back in July. The Rock n Roll San Francisco Half Marathon is the day after the Hollywood Half Marathon. So, I won’t be joining Brian for that race. However, it looks like a really challenging course. Back before the Disneyland Half Marathon last year, I did something similar to Brian which turned into one of my most viewed blogs. In that blog, I went over the Disneyland Half Marathon course (as best as I could without getting into the theme parks). If you missed that blog, click here. So, obviously, I love the idea of giving your readers an idea of what they will encounter before the race.  If you check out Brian’s blog on the Rock n Roll San Francisco Half Marathon, you will find a discount code for the race. Hurry up if you want to run this race. Rock n Roll San Francisco is happening on April 6th.

Sorry for the randomness of this blog post. However, there is just so much buzzing through my mind that I couldn’t stop with posting on one thing today. Also, there is so much coolness happening in the running community that I wanted to share (if you don’t know these things already). Even in this posting, I feel like I’ve left so much off that I could be sharing. This week has also had a lot of Disney news that I’ll talk about tomorrow. Inspiration to keep on training hard and running towards whatever goals you have is out there. I hope this post, even in its randomness, has something that will inspire you.