As I mentioned on Friday, this past Saturday, I ran the Hollywood Half Marathon! So, last week was a second consecutive race week for me. Unlike the week before, I was getting ready to run a half marathon (as opposed to a 5K). So, I had really high hopes that I would be able to pull off a decent week of workouts to get ready for this half marathon.

This is what I ended up with. I don’t know if you can call this a 1 workout week or a week with no workouts and 1 race. Either way, I finished 13.1 miles this week thanks to the Hollywood Half Marathon. It appears as if I haven’t learned the lesson I talked about last Monday. Life got in the way of my training again. Although, it was different this week.

Last Monday, was a scheduled rest day. So, nothing went wrong on Monday. On Tuesday, I was plain exhausted after work. So, I decided this would be the day for me to file our tax returns. After all, April 15th is coming up quick. I needed to know if Brooke and I would owe the government money or if we’d be receiving a refund. If we owed money, I needed to find a way to have that money ready to pay by April 15th. I know, I’m really behind with all of this. Part of me was dreading taxes this year as I was convinced that we’d end up paying the government. As it turned out, we’ll be receiving a refund this year! Yay! All of the refund will end up in the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend fund.

On Wednesday, the financial fun continued. This was the day our financial advisor came by to collect our check to pay our life insurance policy. As we crunched the numbers when we set up the policy, it made more sense to pay an annual payment vs. paying monthly on this. Paying less money once a year than we’d pay over the course of a year in monthly payments for the same coverage always makes more sense. The thing is, when our financial advisor visits, it always turns into at least an hour conversation on how the rest of our investments are going and catching up on what’s going on in life. So, that meeting didn’t end until almost 8pm…not a good time to start a run. So, there went my Wednesday training run time.

On Thursday, I had my Bible study to get to for the evening. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my church is going through a book our pastor wrote called the Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art. It’s a really good book. Whether you’re a Christian or not, I highly recommend reading this book. Even though I was feeling really tired at the end of my day, my wife encouraged me to go to the Bible study and I’m glad that I did. We discussed the chapter on Crafting. In some way, I should have known that this would have been a harder week for me after hearing my pastor preach on this chapter the previous Sunday and then knowing we would be talking about it in the Bible study. I might have to work in a blog post on this chapter because it brought out some really interesting things to ponder. Because of the Bible study, I didn’t have time to run or workout on Thursday.

On Friday, it was Expo day for the Hollywood Half Marathon. I’ll write more about this Expo and the race tomorrow. Even though the race was in Hollywood, California, it is a smaller race. The Expo reflected this. One good thing about the smaller races, though, is that the race organizers do find some fun things for their expo’s and races that the larger races don’t have. Touches like the free photo from the top of this blog post and the photo spot above were nice. Hosting the Expo at the Hollywood Palladium was also a nice touch of trying to make this Expo feel more Hollywood. More on that tomorrow. With the Expo happening, I wasn’t thinking a run or workout the night before was a good idea. So, I had planned on this day being a rest day.

Saturday, was the Hollywood Half Marathon race day! I’ll cover this in much greater detail tomorrow. However, it was an interesting experience for me. Being under trained, I just wanted to finish the race in under 3 hours. So, I was really happy to have accomplished that. The finishers medal was really cool. For a lot of us runners, isn’t this the most important thing? The bling is why we choose some of the races we choose to race in.

I even got to run the last half of the race with my pacer from the Walt Disney World Marathon, Erica. She started earlier than me. This race had a lot of switch backs. I saw her in the first one and steadily made my way up to catch her around the mid way point of the race and we finished it out together.

In the evening on Saturday, I made it out to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It was an awesome movie! If you’re a fan of the Marvel movies, this one cannot be missed. All of you runners will enjoy the fact that the movie starts with a guy running. It’s pretty funny. He’s on a run around Washington D.C. and Steve Rogers (AKA Captain America) comes running by him several times. Each time, Steve Rogers says, “On your left.” Then, passes by. Of course, this information that I’m giving in no way tells anything of the plot of the movie. I just found it fun (especially after running a half marathon).

My church has a few different places they meet at. My wife and I have been going to the meetings at LA Live this year. We meet either at the Club Nokia or the Conga Room. Every once in a while there is something fun going on around the LA Live area in the afternoon. Yesterday, it was the Clippers vs. the Lakers at Saples Center with a 12:30pm tip-off.

A few weeks ago, there was a Lakers game at the same time. However, the Clippers seem to make the whole area a little more festive. There were games people could play like pictured above. It was kind of cool.

On the big screen in the LA Live, they had the trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier play while I was out and about. I tried to catch a picture of it. This is what came out. Since I didn’t get any chores done on Friday or Saturday, Sunday became the chore day. The sad thing about that is if I do all of my chores on Sunday, there is not enough time to get a workout or run in before going to bed. Once I left for church at 9:40am, I was busy all the way up until 10pm. Church gets out at sometime between 11:30am and noon. I got home in time for some lunch. Then, I headed out for groceries, followed by laundry. Then, dinner and preparing meals for the week. By the time all of that got finished and everything cleaned up, it was about time to go to bed.

This coming week has some potential challenges to get workouts and/or runs in. It might also not be so bad. Tonight, I’m going to Disneyland for a rehearsal with my fellow Disney Cast Member Choir peeps. On April 22, 1964, It’s A Small World opened at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. With this being the 50th anniversary of the attraction, Good Morning America will be doing a taping at Disneyland this Thursday to celebrate the anniversary. As part of that taping, several of us in the Disney Cast Member Choir will be singing on the show. Tonight, we have a rehearsal and the Disneyland casting department will be out to cast who gets to sing on the show. I don’t know what my chances are in making the choir. However, I should know by this time tomorrow at the latest if I’m in. If I make it in the choir, I’ve got another rehearsal on Wednesday morning (really early in the morning) and the performance early Thursday morning. So, all of that could really throw my training plans out the window. However, I would say it was for a good cause. After all, how many times do us non-professional singers get to sing on Good Morning America. Am I right?  As soon as I know whether or not I’m going to be singing on Good Morning America, I’ll let y’all know.

One last thing….

Over the weekend, I got my 100th and 101st blog follower! I honestly can’t believe that crossed this milestone. To commemorate this accomplishment, I’ll setting up my first ever give away on the blog this week. So, be on the lookout for that. Due to a potentially crazy week, the give away may not happen until the weekend. However, I’m working to get something up as quickly as I can. Since I’m still working this out, I’m more than open for suggestions about what to give away. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments section and I’ll see what I can do.

Have a fabulous week everyone!