It’s here! By this time next week, I’ll be the proud owner of 4 new medals…3 as part of the Dumbo Double Dare and a Coast to Coast medal. I can’t wait to share that experience with you all next week! As for today, let’s look back at my last full week of training for the Dumbo Double Dare.

On Monday, I had my usual rest day. Tuesday, early in the morning, I did something I’ve never done before. I ran 3 miles BEFORE work!

At the end, it was a slow 3 miles because I hit too many traffic lights and because I was a little worried how the early morning run would affect my job performance. After all, this new job is a crazy busy kind of job. The good news? The early morning wake up and 3 mile run didn’t make me any more tired than usual. I must say that it was nice to be running early in the morning. The roads were pretty clear and it was kind of peaceful. I loved the cool temps I faced! It did feel good to be out and running in the middle of the week again!

On Wednesday, I came home from work to a power outage. Now, we did get the power back on Thursday. However, thanks to the outage, my sleep was delayed on Wednesday night. It ruined my chances of getting in another mid-week run on Thursday morning. I tried to get up at 5:30am to go out. However, my body was having none of it.

Thursday was my wife’s birthday! (Our birthdays are exactly a week apart. Mine will be this Thursday…the first day of the Disneyland Half Marathon Expo!) We celebrated with a few friends at Cafe Bizou. It’s one of Brooke’s favorite places to dine.  She thought up the idea a few weeks before and we were so glad everything worked out. The food was amazing and the ambiance can’t be beat!

The Disney fan in me, loved this poster hanging on the wall at Cafe Bizou.

On Friday, this made the rounds of social media. Did you see it? The USTAF version of the map for the Avengers Super Heroes Half Marathon has been found! Looks like this race will take us through Angel Stadium as well! I’m pretty stoked about that. However, it looks like there might be around 2 miles on the Santa Ana River Trail. For the Disneyland Half Marathon, we’re not on the trail for even a mile and that’s enough. So, I’m not sure I’m happy about having to run 2 miles on this path. After all, the pathway is pretty narrow. As a back of the packer, I’m envisioning a rather slot trip through this part. I can’t wait until November to get to run this course and see how I like it overall. Did you all see this map yet? If so, what do you think of the new runDisney West Coast race course?

After the usual rest day on Friday, I was out for another run on Saturday morning. I took full advantage of the fact that I could run around the Rose Bowl. My schedule said I was to run 4 miles. However, due to many missed workouts, I’ve been making changes on the fly. After last week, I felt like I should possibly do a 10 mile run. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wake up early enough to get in 10 miles. So, I decided to run another 10k instead. If you go back one week, you’ll notice that I beat my 1ok time by 4 minutes! It also felt much better without all the stop lights. The first mile is the toughest mile of the 3  in the Rose Bowl loop. When you do only one lap around the loop, it’s not a big deal. However, once you start up mile 4, you can feel the difference. If not for the 4th mile, I might have finished the 10k faster. The other miles were not that bad. I felt like I could go on around another lap. However, the sun was making its presence known. Even though, it’s a little cooler than it’s been out here, when you’re in the sun, it always feels warmer than it actually is.  Plus, I was only supposed to run 4 miles. So, I’ll take what I did.

Unfortunately, Sunday did not go as planned. So the gym workout I wanted to do just didn’t get done. Much like Thursday’s missed run, I just didn’t get good sleep the night before. On Sunday, I never really woke up. It was a chore kind of day. We had brunch with my sister-in-law who was down from San Francisco for a wedding. Time got away from me in the afternoon and before I knew it, there wasn’t enough time to get a workout in. I felt like the rally monkey in the above picture all day long. I just wanted some more sleep.

It might have been a disappointing ending to the week with missing the Sunday gym workout. However, I will not be that disappointing. Why? It’s Dumbo Double Dare week! The training for this race has not been ideal in any way. However, I enter this week feeling much more prepared for the Disneyland Half Marathon than I was for the OC Half Marathon back in May. So, even though there are still two training runs left on the calendar, I feel as ready as I can be. This is not going to be a half marathon PR attempt. It’s going to be a couple of races where I fully intend to enjoy. Bring on the Dumbo Double Dare!