After such a great week 7, week 8 turned into a little of a bust. I only fit two runs in this week and no gym workouts. Not the best way to try to build consistency. However, this was a week filled with unexpected distractions. So, let’s go through the week.

Monday was the usual rest day and Disney Employee Choir practice. Candlelight at Disneyland is getting really close!

Tuesday, I was supposed to be up and running miles. However, my wife had a health scare that lead us to going into the doctor’s office in the morning on Tuesday. The health scare, which turned out to be nothing to be worried about, combined with an unusual morning and the emotions of what the doctor could say, threw me off schedule. It sucked to miss the run, but I thought I could make it up Wednesday.

I did that. Wednesday, I got up early to run 3 miles before work. It was another sub 35 minute 3 mile run! The extra 0.01 came because Nike Plus had changed their app a little bit. I thought I had ended the workout, but it was still going….even after I thought I was done. Oops. This was another good morning run. There was nothing too memorable about it except that the streak continues!

Wednesday, while I was at work, HR and myself set up an interview for the Copyright Coordinator Position at Disney. I’ve known they were going to hire this position since a few days into starting with Copyrights as the Legal Secretary. I applied for the position around a month ago. So, it was awesome news when they finally set up the interview. Due to my boss’s schedule, we had to schedule the interview for Thursday. It was another unexpected distraction from training. (I should mention that I think the interview went well!)

Then, Wednesday night, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series! It was their third World Series Championship in 5 years! The Giants are my favorite National League team and second favorite team overall (to the Angels of course). My wife was a J.T. Snow fan back in the day. When he left the Angels to join the Giants, she followed her fandom. So, I married a San Francisco Giants fan and my interest in the team has grown each year since. So, Wednesday was Game 7 of the World Series. The game ended at a little after 8:30pm out here in California. Then, we had to watch the post game celebration. It made it very hard to get to sleep on Wednesday night. So, the two Wednesday distractions lead to a missed run on Thursday. Urgh!

Friday was Halloween and a planned rest day. At the Walt Disney Studios, they always celebrate Halloween with some style. I got to take the above pic with skeleton Goofy.

This year, there was a strong Haunted Mansion theme to the whole event.

I kind of loved how they had the Disney-fied versions of the famous portraits in the Haunted Mansion!

The highlight, for me, is the costume contest. I mean, we have Imagineers participating in this event. It’s so much fun. With the theme being the Haunted Mansion, we had the bride that appears at the end of the attraction as a co-MC for the contest. She was looking for a new husband. After each category, she gave her thoughts as to who should win. It was so much fun!

The best category was the Most Disney category. Above is Baymax from the upcoming Disney Animation film Big Hero 6 (out in theaters this Friday).

Jack Skellington made an appearance…

so did Olaf.

How could we have a Most Disney category without an appearance from Walt Disney himself!

The final vote crowned Baymax the winner! There were 24 entrants for this category. I could have included many more pictures of some of the very clever costumes, but will spare you.

Another fun photo-op was this one with a larger than life Baymax promoting the release of Big Hero 6. I had lots of fun at this lunch time event on the lot.

On the calendar for Saturday was a 14 mile run. Mother nature stepped in and ended that thought by sending some really rare rain. Another unexpected distraction. Now, I should have just gone to the gym in the morning and switch up my weekend workout plans. However, I didn’t. I had a lazy morning instead.

Sunday morning, I made up for the missed run of Saturday by running 14 miles at Huntington Beach. It was beautiful day for a run!

I haven’t run at Huntington Beach since the Surf City USA Half Marathon on Super Bowl Sunday! It’s a different beach run than the Santa Monica run I do.

I simply LOVE the views I get while running this route! I’ll do a separate post on this run. It was my final long run before the Avengers Super Heroes Half Marathon. To sum up the run, it was a tale of two runs. The first 10 miles went reasonably well. The last 4 sucked. I’ll talk more about this later in the week.

What matters is that I finished all 14 miles! It was slow for the last 4 miles and I walked almost the entire last 4, but I finished! When I was training for the Disneyland Half Marathon this year, I didn’t make this run. So, it was a victory for that alone!

I was just happy to be done! This is the longest training run I’ve finished since the Walt Disney World Marathon. So, it was fitting that I wore my Marathon shirt!

After the run, I treated myself to lunch at Ruby’s.

I made sure to get plenty of water! After all, you’ve got to stay hydrated!

The view from my booth was amazing! Don’t you think?

It was such a beautiful day at Huntington Beach and the waves were pretty great for all the surfers out there.

Yes, I could have stayed all day! However, I needed to get home.

When I got home, I weighed myself and found some good news….I lost 2 lbs this week! And a half percent of body fat to boot! Score!

My plan to eliminate soda is going by rather smoothly as well. I kept to my plan of drinking 1 soda per day every day this week! There were a few temptations to go beyond that. However, I’m proud to report, I resisted that temptation. Now, I have one more week with 1 soda per day. Then, I’m pretty sure it will get hard.

As you can see, it was a week full of unexpected things that caused distraction from my workouts. This week, as I begin to taper for the Avengers Super Heroes Half Marathon, the challenge is to make all 4 workouts.

 

By the way…did you see this commercial at the NYC Marathon? It may say it’s about marathoners, but it’s actually about runners period. I got a good laugh at the “we hate hills” followed by “we love hills.” Did you get to watch the NYC Marathon on Sunday? Both the men and women had exciting finishes! Unfortunately, Meb was not able to repeat his Boston Marathon win. But, I find it so amazing to watch those elite runners go. Congrats to all the finishers of the New York City Marathon!