Journal of today’s activities:

Mario Marciel, leader of the San Jose Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force asked me to visit him today rather than last night. The good news of his request was that I got to drive home immediately after a full day of teaching yesterday at the Santa Clara Juvenile Hall. The bad news was that I had to make another long drive into San Jose today. At least I was well prepared. Over the past few weeks I’ve been preparing for this meeting. I now have slides that will guide me through three full days of staff development training. I really call it leadership training, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of teaching 40 government employees and community interventionists the strategies of leadership that guided me through my journey. Preparations I made while serving my lengthy sentence empowered me. Now I’m thrilled to teach others. The hours I’ve invested in those preparations gave me the strength to show Mario that I was ready to lead. We went through the outline I prepared so that he would have a better idea of how I would teach his team. Then we set some dates to begin the training later this spring. I’m looking forward to leading this training session and learning from the process. Then I will work to introduce the training to others.

• Days since my release from 26 years in federal prison: 198
• Miles run today: 0
• Miles run this week: 0
• Miles run this month: 180.2
• Miles run in 2014: 456.33
• Miles I need to run to reach my 2,400-mile running goal for 2014:
• Number of miles I’m ahead of schedule or behind schedule: 81.84
• Today’s Weight: 172