Week 7 of the Dumbo Double Dare training was pretty darn successful if you ask me. I made all 4 workouts and feel like the focus that has been largely missing this year is coming back. After all, in the past four weeks, I’ve had 4 workouts, 0 workouts, 3 workouts, and 4 workouts for 11 workouts in 4 weeks. That’s almost a 3 workout per week average. Plus, I’m trending towards finishing all the workouts on my calendar. That’s a great gain for me! One thing that’s becoming very apparent to me is I need to shift my mental outlook on this training. A year ago, I was following a half marathon training program for the very first time. I was a complete newbie. Now, I’m a marathon finisher. As I read various running blogs, one thing that sticks out to me is the way the more accomplished runners talk about their training weeks. Some of the bloggers I follow run up to 6 or 7 days a week and it’s no big deal to them. While I sit here and pat myself on the back for 11 workouts over a 4 week period, many of the running bloggers I follow are training 10-12 times in two weeks. I’m not comparing myself to them as a negative, but more as a motivation to where I need to get to. If 2013 was my year of becoming a runner, 2014 needs to be the year I train and think like a runner. I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone reading this. However, it’s what I’m thinking.

So, after week 6’s three workouts and one missed run, I really wanted to up my game this week and finish all 4 scheduled workouts. Unfortunately for me, this required a little alteration.

On Tuesday, I successfully registered for the Star Wars Rebel Challenge happening at Disneyland in January 2015! That was the good news of Tuesday. Once the dust settled and the excitement died down, the reality of not sleeping much Monday evening caught up with me and I was exhausted by day’s end. That meant I needed to skip my run that evening. My body needed the rest it didn’t get the night before.

On Wednesday, I made up for that by skipping the choir practice I was supposed to go to in order to get my 3 miles in! The time wasn’t super. However, it felt amazing to be running again in the middle of the week! Two weeks in a row and three weeks out of four that I made a mid-week run! It may not be much, but it’s progress!

I followed up Wednesday’s run with another on Thursday! Progress! I took more than a minute off the time from Wednesday! I was huffing and puffing. However, I hit almost every single interval as I planned. I want to be faster and I have been faster. However, Thursday was better and I like that!

Friday was a rest day and a much deserved rest day!

Saturday called for 8 miles. Since it’s been a while since I last ran at the beach, I got up early and headed to Santa Monica Beach. As I drove down to Santa Monica, I thought about the 8 mile training run I had the previous year on the Dumbo Double Dare Challenge training program. That time, I ran from Seal Beach to Bolsa Chica Beach and back. I was so nervous about my longest training run to that date. This time around, I just wanted to finish without pain.

The weather was beautiful for a run at the beach and it felt good to be back. Here I am in the second mile running through Venice Beach.

In previous runs along this route, I haven’t taken pictures at Venice Beach. So, this time, I took the time to capture some of what I came across and I ran through Venice Beach. The first mile was a little on the slower side for me as I was a little worried about finishing all 8 miles strong. So, it took nearly 11 minutes to finish. I was feeling pretty good all the way through Venice.

I’m not entirely sure if the Muscle Beach part that I run by is still considered Venice Beach or not. However, it’s a pretty cool idea of lifting weights at the beach. Don’t you think?

Or, how about playing some tennis by the beach? The thing I love about running by Venice Beach is that there is plenty to distract you from the fact you’re running. Even though it may not look like in the pictures I’ve taken, there are a good amount of runners out on this path which is always more fun!  At some point just past this area is where the sidewalk ends and you have to run behind the beachfront houses. By then, you’re in the third mile. I kept thinking to myself that I was only about a mile from turning around and crossing the half way point. What’s nice about running in the alley way behind the beachfront homes is the high amount of shade. There was no “June Gloom” at the beach on Saturday. So, the break from the sun was much appreciated. Even though, the fourth mile was a little slower for me.

Previous runs at Santa Monica have been for over 10 miles. So, always make it out to this point. Even though the distance was less this time around, I couldn’t resist the awesome view!

See what I mean? I actually stopped my watch at 4.25 miles so I could go all the way out and take in the beauty of this area. It probably only cut off 0.10 miles or so from the each way of my out and back run. However, since I wasn’t sure, I stopped the watch.

Anyways, after stopping and taking in the beautiful scenery, I headed back down this path. I’m not sure what the technical word is for this little piece of land that went out into the ocean. However, running up and down it, is one of my favorite things about running the Santa Monica Beach route I run.

Time to head back to Santa Monica Beach!

One of the cool things about this training route is that you get to see Venice Beach wake up. On the way back, there were slightly more people out.

The tennis court, which was empty on my way out, had plenty of people occupying them on the way back.

It looked like Red Bull had some sort of basketball tournament going on at the beach later in the day that they were setting up for.

Eventually, I made it all the way back to Santa Monica! Because of the extra distance I put in the first half, I didn’t finish exactly where I had started from. That’s fine. I was happy to have completed all 8 miles!

It was a good day to be out for a run. I’m not going to lie, though. Parts of the run were difficult. I took one 3 minute walk break in the seventh mile and had a few of my run intervals fall short of the 1 minute they were supposed to last. At times, my legs felt like rubber. However, that’s all that went bad with this run. I was pleased overall with my finish time (somewhere around 1 hour, 42 minutes). That kept me under a 13 minute per mile pace overall.

On Sunday, I hit up LA Fitness for another gym workout! Due to time constraints, I went to the Pasadena LA Fitness rather than the newer one in Sierra Madre. In Pasadena, you park in a parking structure and enter underground. It was a good, solid workout. Even though I was a little tired going into this workout, I was able to maintain what I’ve done previously on the elliptical machine in 27 minutes. Then, with the assisted pull ups and dips, I upped the weights for one set of 15 reps, keeping the other two sets at the weight I’d done previously. Then, I upped the weights for both the leg press and the ab crunch machine.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my church meets in several locations. The one my wife and I attend is at the Club Nokia in the LA Live complex (right across from Staples Center). My wife was serving in the children’s ministry which meant that we’d arrive pretty early for church. So, I wandered around the LA Live area and noticed they were setting up for something…

The Los Angeles Kings hockey team won the Stanley Cup on Friday evening. Today, there was a victory parade. Yesterday, they were setting up the area for the thousands of arriving fans.

It’s such a shame that Wayne Gretzky never got to win a Stanley Cup with the LA Kings.

Then, it was off to church. As you can tell, Mosaic is not your typical church.

Week 7 of Dumbo Double Dare training was a fantastic week! On to week 8! This week features the first of the back to back running days on the weekend. I’ll be running 1 mile on Saturday and 7 miles Sunday. So, I’ll be switching up some of my training routine.

How did your week go?