Week Six was so much better than Week Five! That’s the good news. How I feel about this week comes from how the past two weeks have gone.

This was the plan for the past two weeks. The top portion is the actual calendar dates like I have them planned on my training plan tab. Below them are what the Galloway training plan has required. You can see that the 30-45 minutes he has planned are 3 miles for me.

This is what actually happened. I missed the 6.5 mile run in week 5. So, I decided to alter the 4 miles (with Magic Mile) scheduled for week 6 and replace it with the missed 6.5 miles from week 5. Got it? I hope so. Let’s look at the week.

Monday was a planned rest day. If you look at the above calendar, that would make my eighth rest day in a row…not good.

Tuesday I ran 3 miles. In the screen grab from my Nike Plus tracking, I wanted to include my comments…Rough and Slow. That’s how I felt about the run. This is what happens when you take 8 days off from working out and 9 days off from running. It hurts and you go slow. Now, if I had been training hard for months prior to taking a week off, I might find some of this to be different. However, my 2014 has been up and down. So, while I may have needed a week off mentally, physically, it hurt me. However, it’s far better for me to grind out these three miles (with all the slowness and pain) than to watch the streak of rest days grow. I’ve been through this before. When I miss runs and/or workouts, I’m going to hurt more than usual. That’s fine. I need to grind it out so that I can regain what I lost. So, for Tuesday, it was a victory just to finish!

Wednesday was National Running Day. I wish this celebration had been scheduled one day prior because it came on a planned rest day. Plus, I had a choir practice after work. So, there was no time to get in a run. Instead of running, I lived vicariously through my fellow runners and wrote a blog post on why I run. I also got to watch all those Disney Vacation Club Members, Disneyland Annual Pass Holders, and Walt Disney World Annual Pass Holders share their excitement over getting into the upcoming Star Wars Half Marathon Weekend races in the pre-sale. The Star Wars Rebel Challenge sold out in 9-12 minutes!

Thursday was supposed to be the day I made up for missing out on National Running Day. I was all psyched up for 3 miles. I came home from work and got ready to put my miles in. Then, technology failed me. My headphones quit on me right as I got out to the street. I tried to get them to work. However, it was to no avail. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I went back to the apartment and tried switching out with my wife’s headphones…failure again. The same thing happened with her headphones. They worked when I walked out the door and then stopped working the very moment I got to the street I start out on. Ugh! Both of our headphones had been showing signs that this might happen. So, I assumed it was a headphone issue. I wish I were one of those runners who could run without music for long periods of time. I am not. That’s just who I am. Kudos to those of you who can run without music or a podcast in your ears. I am not one of you. So, I decided that, without music, it was not meant to be. I changed out of my running gear and headed to Target to get some new headphones to run with on Friday. I came up with a new plan for the weekend really quick. I would run on Friday evening, cross train at the gym on Saturday, and run my 6.5 miles on Sunday. I’ve heard lots of runners who like Yurbuds. So, when I saw them at Target for a little more than what my current headphones cost, I decided to purchase a pair of the Yurbuds for myself.

Friday was supposed to make up for the lost Thursday run. However, I had yet another technological failure. I came home from work all set to go out for a 3 mile run. I plugged in the new Yurbuds headphones. I couldn’t get them to work. This time, I couldn’t even get them to work at all. If new headphones don’t work, then there’s something else wrong. About a week prior to this, I was up for an upgrade on my cell phone. So, I had been doing research on what to get next. My wife got an iPhone 5s just before our Walt Disney World Marathon trip. She loves it!. I’ve been talking it over with some co-workers and decided to join my wife in getting the iPhone 5s as my next phone. After two days of failure to get music through 3 different sets of headphones (one of them brand new), I concluded that the problem was with the jack that you plug your headphones into on my Motorola Droid Bionic. Since I didn’t want to lose another day of training, I changed out of my running gear and headed over to the Verizon Wireless store and upgrade my phone. So, I’m now the owner of an iPhone 5s. I’m signed up with the Verizon Edge program which will allow me to upgrade my phone again in a year. This way, I won’t have to miss out on the iPhone 6 when it comes out next year.

Saturday, I finally was able to get out and run again! Yay! After a great deal of time on Friday evening and Saturday, I had a playlist up and going and my phone pretty well set up! If I had run on Saturday morning, it would have been at the Rose Bowl. However, with the heat we had on Saturday, I needed to wait until nearly sunset to go our and run. That meant running over the newest 6 mile loop I’ve found around my apartment. This 6.5 miles was a real grind it out kind of run. The first couple miles went well. However, I felt tightness in my claves and quads throughout. By the end of the third mile, the lower back pain returned (as it had on Tuesday). By that point, I was going to have to finish 6 miles somehow. So, I walked it out for a while. The walking slowed my overall pace considerably. However, a funny thing happened in the 4th mile. The pain went away. That meant that most of mile 4 and a good portion of mile 5 were pretty good. I got back into regular intervals and tried to minimize my losses.

Something crazy happens when you read all of these mantras from various running web sites. Sometimes they stick with you. As I was grinding it out in miles 4 and 5, I thought of this one. Towards the end of mile 5, I kept thinking to myself that “pain is only temporary.” Somehow this got me through.

I know that I’ve probably over shared this song. However, at the start of mile 6, this song came on my playlist and was like a healing balm on my body. For this song and this one only, I felt no pain. Weird and cool at the same time. Sorry for sharing it again, but this was something that I want to remember about this run. The power of music is pretty amazing! During the 6th mile, I kept debating with myself as to whether I’d do all 6.5 miles as planned or quit at 6 miles. By the time I got to the end of the 6th mile, I just had to finish it all out. The last half mile was not very fun at all. I was completely spent and walked almost all of it. However, I was very happy at the end to say I finished all 6.5 miles!

Yep. I wore my 2014 Coast to Coast runDisney shirt as inspiration. I know that some think that you jinx yourself by wearing the shirt before accomplishing the goal. However, for me, it’s a reminder of what I’m chasing…my first Coast to Coast medal!

Sunday, the wife and myself headed to the gym. She’s been doing really well lately at being active! So, she really wanted to go to the gym on Sunday. I haven’t posted what I’ve done at the gym too much. However, I wanted to do so today for this reason….

Usually, I’m doing the elliptical machine, assisted pull ups, assisted dips, crunches, and leg press machine. When I finished all of that, my wife wasn’t finished yet. So, I went to the treadmill. Here’s why this is cool to me. If you go up and add the total miles I was supposed to run this week according to my actual plan, you’ll see that the total is 10 miles. That would be 3 miles on Tuesday, 3 miles on Thursday, and 4 miles on Saturday. Well, I missed one run. With my decision to make up for the missed 6.5 mile run on Saturday, my total miles for the week stood at 9.5 miles. So, even with the missed run, I was a half mile short of the original plan for week 6. Since my wife wasn’t finished, I got to finish the last half mile plus another quarter-mile! So, on a week where I missed one run due to technological failures, I ended up with the scheduled miles, plus a quarter-mile!

This gym workout kicked my bootay in a big way. However, at the end, I had finished my third workout of the week! Also, I finished a little more than my required miles according to the original Galloway plan. To top it all off, I ended the week 3 pounds lighter as well! Not a bad week at all (even if it was a grind it out kind of week)!

Up next? Tomorrow morning, I’m hoping to channel my inner Mickey Jedi and that the force will be with me as I register for the Star Wars Rebel Challenge. Wish me luck! For those of you who are planning on joining me online to register for this challenge…get online early. Registration opens at Noon EDT/9am PDT. Be ready at least 10 minutes early. May the force be with you.