This past week was not the best for me in training. It was a week that showed me the difference between being a professional athlete and a weekend warrior.

I saw this today on the Rock n Roll Marathon Series Facebook page. I love this page because they’re always posting encouraging images. It’s interesting to read this today because of how last week turned out for me. Here’s the snapshot.

Only 2 runs and that was the entirety of the week. I’m not a morning person. So, every time I get up earlier than 7am is a miracle of sorts. I mention this because it is why my training runs mostly come after work. That’s where life sometimes steps in and alters the plan. In a perfect world, I would find myself able to ignore the tiredness that sets in throughout the day, set aside negative emotions, and get out and run because that’s what I’m supposed to do that day. However, this week showed me that it’s always going to take some serious focus to be consistent. Tuesday, I had every intention of getting out and running 6 miles. I was so pumped up about getting into the Avengers Super Heroes Half Marathon in the morning that it seemed like this should be an easy day to be motivated to run. However, by the time work ended, I was simply exhausted. It turned out to be a busy work day and my decision to be out the door early to work that day burned me.

Then, on Wednesday, I had every intention of making up for the lost run. Only, I forgot to charge the cell phone (with my run apps and music on it) during the afternoon. So, by the time I left work, the battery was nearly dead. Ugh! Again, in a perfect world, I would have remembered to charge the phone in the afternoon so I could use it that evening.

As you can see, Thursday, I did make it out for 6 hard miles. It was a pretty painful run actually. Missing workouts sucks. I was running really well for the first 2.5 miles of this run over a new 6 mile route. However, right about then, my lower back started bothering me. At first, I decided to take a 2 minute walk break instead of the normal 1 minute one. However, the back continued to be a pain (literally). So, I walked out almost the rest of the mile. By the time I got to the end of the third mile, I started feeling better and started running again. The back pain would come and go for the rest of the run. So, while my time was slow, I was happy it wasn’t slower. That’s what I get for missing workouts.

On Friday, I headed down to Angels Stadium to pick up the race packets for the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K. I took a half day at work because they only were giving out the packets until 6pm. When you work in Burbank and have to be down in Anaheim by 6pm, there is no way you will make it if you don’t leave early. Even leaving at 1pm, it took one and a half hours to get there. Gotta love LA traffic.

On Saturday morning, I ran in the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K. Again, life stepped in before the race. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit La Habra, California at 9:10pm on Friday evening. My wife and I were in our wind down portion of the evening when it hit. We had planned on getting to sleep around 9:30pm with a 5am wake up for the race. Well, mother nature had other plans. Even though we were a little distance away from the epicenter, it shook our apartment pretty good. For me, I didn’t feel the earth moving as much as I heard the walls and windows rattling. It was pretty loud. Brooke felt the shaking. Thing is, the shaking lasted pretty long as well. So, after the shaking, we wanted to check the news. I did have the Dodgers-Angels game on and you could see the camera shaking. However, no mention from the announcers of an earthquake. Only ONE station shared the information about the earthquake. Later, I learned that I should have just checked out Twitter. It took us until around 10:30pm to get to bed. After all, we had to find out how big the quake was and where the epicenter was located.

The Angels Baseball Foundation 5K was super fun! Brooke and I ran with a friend of ours Emmanuel. I’ll talk more about this run tomorrow. However, the Angels have really stepped up their game with this years event. I’ve run in this race the previous 2 years and loved the changes they made to the race course as well as the other additions (like the card board stand ups of the Angels players). The above picture was with Mike Trout. Saturday felt like Mike Trout day. I knew that this would be a slower race for me because when I run with my wife, I let her do the pacing. So, I had planned on doing another run later in the evening to make up for it. However, the quake took sleep away from us and Brooke and I were beat by the time we got home. So, a second run didn’t happen.

Well, I may have had fun at the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K on Saturday morning. However, because my wife and I were beat, we didn’t get any of the chores done that we needed to on Saturday. So, Sunday became a day of church and chores. I left the apartment at 9am and was on the go until 10:30pm. So, again, life got in the way of a planned gym workout. I know that I need to learn how to rise above the feelings of tiredness. However, I haven’t made it yet. The past two months have left me trying to figure out how I made it through all that training last year. One thing that I did learn through my preparations for the WDW Marathon is not to let the bad weeks or days keep me down. Each new day and each new week is an opportunity to improve on what you did before. Of course, the opposite is true as well. You can have an amazing week one week and a complete failure the next. To be consistent requires mental toughness. It never ceases to amaze me how easily you can lose focus. As I enter the Hollywood Half Marathon race week, I’m hoping for a bounce back week.

Question of the day (or even week)…How do you maintain focus on your training when life steps in to distract you?