"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail"

Another beautiful day for running. On vacation this week, getting some work done around the house and running errands. Ran 7 miles at noon. Out into a strong breeze, but heading back was effortless.

I'm running the Bold in the Cold Half marathon on Saturday. The temperature should be mid to upper 40s at race time. Sounds good to me.

AP: 7:38 (the last two miles with the wind, and mostly downhill were 6:32 and 6:28)

57F, S15, sunny

Lunchtime run w/ Darin. Another great day for running.

60F, S10, Sunny

AP: 7:20

Bold in the Cold Half Marathon. As I still feel like I'm not 100% after taking some time off after SGM for my right calf to heel, I just wanted to run a solid 13.1 - shooting for about 1:40 (7:38/mi). The weather was perfect this year. About 45F at start, a little breeze from the north and cloudy. 

I started off in the middle of the pack. This required a lot of zig-zagging and heading off road briefly to avoid walkers and people jogging 4 across...grrr. The first mile was about 8:00. A little slow, but  was probably good to get warmed up. I slowly increased my speed to about 7:30/mi for the next few miles. It felt good. I ran with some friends briefly. There was a 15K and 1/2 marathon running at the same time, and mostly on the same course.

The last 2 miles seemed very tough. I had about a 7:30 average pace, but slowed considerable in the uphill sections. I even walked through the last aid station with 1.5 miles to go. With one mile to go, my running buddy Dave passed me. I had nothing left to try to hold him off, or even try to stick with him. 

I finished in 1:39:28 (about 10 minutes faster than I ran at the White Rock half last month). I'm happy with my results and didn't push it too, too hard. Next week at the Houston full, will be quite a challenge. I'll probably try to hold 8:00-8:30 pace there and treat it as a long training run.