I hadn't planned on it but my second race of the year is coming up soon. As in Saturday.

I signed up to run a 5K in Fountain Valley, Calif. The race is scheduled for Saturday morning at 8 a.m. After running a marathon, why bother with a 5K? Well, a friend of mine is running this race and it's always great to hang out with him. He's not a runner but used to run back in his high school days. He signed up for this race and has been asking me if I would run it with him so I finally caved and said that I would.

What are my goals in this race? Well, I want to go for a PR. Why not? My buddy will probably run it pretty fast so I might try and keep up with him. My 5K PR is 23:03 set in March of last year. Not sure if I can run that fast but giving a 5K all of my effort and energy shouldn't be a problem. I mean, I just finished running a race that took me more than four hours to complete, so 20-something minutes seems simple and digestible.

The only hitch now is rain. It could rain on race day. Probably wouldn't be a heavy rain but either way I'm not too worried about it.

MILESTONE

I ran 12 miles on Sunday. Hadn't intended to but when I showed up for our group run Sunday morning, that's how much the group wanted to run, and that's how much I ended up running. Wasn't the easiest run but I came out pretty good, considering I ran Surf City the previous Sunday.

The distance helped push me over 200 miles for the year. I'm at 201 miles for 2011. Just something else to feel good about this year.