It's been a long time! I guess that's what moving and starting a new job will do to you.
Running has been going very well. My "easy" pace has fallen close to 9min/mile, and I have been good (well, up to last week) about doing all my key workouts during the week. I've found that thinking of my 1/2 marathon pace as "purposeful" rather than "comfortably hard" helps me get the right pace. I just can't run hard anything for 13miles.
My 1/2 marathon is coming up in two weeks, and I've set some goals:
Conservative goal- 1:55
Considering I've done my last two long runs at 9:05 pace and it felt very easy, I think this is a most do-able goal.
Moderate goal- 1:50-1:55
Again, based on my training times, I don't think I'll have any problem getting in this range.
Pie-in-the-sky Goal- Close to 1:50
Probably won't happen, but if all the stars aligned and Jupiter was in the 7th house (Who's house?) then it could happen. It would be a very fast race for me, but not absolutely totally out of the realm of possibility.
I've decided after the 1/2 I'm going to try a FIRST-type plan to get me through the winter and maybe to run the Madison Marathon next spring. So rather than running 5 days per week I'd swim/bike/row three days per week and run (but more intensely) the other three days. I'm going to try to do spinning with the tri team here (not super convenient location-wise, but it might be a good way to make friends) and am taking some swimming lessons starting next week to help me get back in shape for that. I swam 2000m last week and it wasn't pretty.
