3/10 - 3/16

Mon: 6-miles
Tues: 8x400m (88-90)
Wed: 6-miles
Thurs: 6-miles, strides
Fri: 4-miles
Sat: 6-miles, strides
Sun: 1E + Tobacco Road Half Marathon + 1E
Total: 49 miles

I signed up to pace the 1:40 group for Tobacco Road, and it was a "taper" week, so I intentionally cut my mileage this week. I needed it. I could tell last week that my legs were getting tired, and I was beginning to enter into "slogging through workouts to get them over with" mode. That's not good for anyone. I like running, and I intend to keep it that way.

Monday's 6-miler was a little quicker than usual... yay for spring and daylight. It felt ok though, and gave me some confidence for holding that pace for the half this weekend. Tuesday's track workout also went well. For some reason, everyone was dead set on a 90sec pace, except for Allison and I who kept pushing from behind around the 200m mark. It felt good to stretch out my legs, and I was happy we didn't have to do a longer workout because it was a lot warmer than it has been. I did a 2-mile warmup and cooldown to get 6 miles in for the day. Matt and I kept the pace a lot slower on Wednesday, and managed to finish a few minutes before the monsoon hit. I saw Elaine on Thursday, and my hamstring/calf/ankle felt a lot better after. We ran at Centennial Thursday night, and it definitely felt longer/faster than it was. Oh well, my hamstring felt good on the strides (which use a greater range of motion), and I usually feel like crap on taper weeks anyways. On Friday, I tried to get a sense of what a 1:40 half pace was (~7:38 min/mile)... although my average was right, I was kind of all over the place. Saturday's shakeout run felt fine.

The Tobacco Road Half Marathon starts at 7AM. Parking/shuttles are usually a mess, so they recommended getting there around 4:30-5AM. Luckily, Keith new of a spot about a mile away that we could park, so we left the house at 5AM... I was thankful for the extra hour of sleep! A lot of my friends were either running the half or full marathon or pacing. Matt tagged along too to help unofficially pace the 1:40 group with Jerry and I. Pacing the half was a lot of fun, but a lot of pressure. We had a good group with us though. The first bit of the course is downhill, so it's hard not to go out a little under pace. We were trying to stay as consistent as possible. However, we were a little slow the first mile owing to the start of any larger race being a cluster !@#$. Then, we overshot the "makeup" pace on the second, very downhill mile. It was also hard for me to judge pace because my stupid watch had gained 0.1 miles by the 3-mile mark. We were about 15sec under at the turnaround (halfway), which wasn't a bad spot to be since the second half is definitely more up. We continued to gain a little bit each mile (we were probably 3-4sec under pace), but consistent. Oddly, the pace didn't seem too hard to maintain on the uphill sections. We finished up in the lower 1:39's, which I judged as an accurate enough pace.

A lot of my friends either an PR's and/or placed well, and the rain held off, so it was a good day. Surprisingly, the 1:40 pace didn't seem that bad. I had to hold back at some points (the more downhill sections), which will be important to keep in mind for Boston since the first half of the race is downhill. This was the first test of a longer "marathon pace" workout that I've done for a long time. Maybe I'm in better shape than I thought. One more long run, and two more semi-long runs with some pace miles...