Tempo: Five minutes easy warm up, then 12 minutes at half-marathon race pace. Four minutes easy, then repeat 12 minutes of faster pace. Finish with five minutes easy run cool down.

Distance: 3.6 miles

Time: 38:07

Performance Stats (out of 5 ★)

Legs: ★ ★ ★ ★

Gut: ★ ★ ★ .5

Energy: ★ ★ ★ ★

Mind: ★ ★ ★ ★

Overall: ★ ★ ★ ★ .5

Soundtrack: Limp Bizkit, Results May Vary

A very cool thing happened on this morning's run. I am starting to figure out my half-marathon race pace! This sounds simple enough, but really it hasn't been. See, all of this training has been through the recommendations of the Runner's World Complete Guide to Running magazine-book. Up until this point, the long runs have been at an "easy" pace. What had me nervous was that when I was running the faster paces during the tempo runs, they seemed faster, made me out of breathe, and was something that I didn't think that I could continue for 13 miles. Sure, I can do the distance runs on the weekends, but this is like at a 10:00 minute mile pace, and I am hoping to do better than that for the half-marathon in October.

Now, this may have something to do with the 5K faster pace that I ran in last week's Catsup & Mustard 5K, but I could feel this morning that the faster half-marathon pace is the pace that I like. I actually enjoy running at this pace more so than the warm up easy pace (the easy pace is the pace that I normally run on my long runs). Today for the first time, I can feel that with continuing this training schedule, I am going to get myself to a place where I should be able to run the 13 miles at my goal pace. So 1 hour 50 minute half marathon, you better watch out. I might just have this figured out... if I don't get injured. And really, I guess that's the point. Mixing up tempo runs, hills and distance runs keep you moving forward without having to run race pace all the time, thus avoiding injury. Man, I hope so!