The race is Saturday! The race is Saturday. I’m freaking out a little.

Tuesday

Huge motivation issues. I finally forced myself to just go do three miles by promising an entire frozen pizza upon my return. I actually promised myself Little Caesars, but did a bait and switch at the end to save money.

Since I didn’t want to run, I wanted it to be over as soon as I started. This means I ran faster than I should have. During the first mile, I estimated that I was probably running close to a 10 min/mi. When my watch beeped to let me know I had gone a mile, it said my average pace was over an 11 min/mi. I about cried. I was only going half marathon pace? How was I ever going to maintain that pace for 13 miles when it felt so fast after a mile? It made me feel a little better when I got home and saw that my GPS data was messed up for the first part of the mile, so I actually WAS going a little faster than that (although probably still not as fast as I thought I was going, but I was running into the wind). I ended up doing a little over 3 miles in 33 minutes (with 3 walk breaks), or just slightly lower than an 11 min/mi average. Yes, a little fast.

Wednesday

Since I needed to go buy gels for the half, I decided to go out to run with the East Nasty group. They meet up fairly close to Nashville Running Company, so I could stop by there, pick up gels, and then walk over to meet the group.

This was the first time I’ve ever really run with the Wednesday group (minus that time last year when I attempted the Tomato 5k route with the potato to tomato group…that didn’t go so well). I lined up towards the back of the group and soon struck up a conversation with a couple other ladies. We all were running with the 10+ min/mi group.

The run went pretty well. The route was an out and back from East Nashville, through downtown, and up to the Musica statue (yes, I had to run that hill from the Fangtastic 5k…I get to run it again in the half marathon), for a total of around 10km.

I will definitely say being in a group helped for this run. If I hadn’t been running with other people, I probably would have been slower or walked some (the only stopping I did was at stop lights). Instead, I completed what would have been my fastest 10k ever if I had run 0.02 more miles. 6.18 miles in 1:05, or about a 10:30 min/mi average! And on a route with some serious hills (the Music Row hill, the pedestrian bridge, and that half mile long hill up Boscobel in East Nashville). Confidence raised for the half marathon!

Thursday

I met up with one of the girls I had met the night before for a run on the greenway. She’s a little speedier than me, so we ended up doing five miles at an average of 10:40 min/mi despite my legs being slightly heavy from the two speedy runs on the days before. We took a few walk breaks, mostly up hills, and still managed that average, if that gives you an idea of how speedy we were being. I was very thankful for my rest day on Friday and resolved to keep the rest of my runs easy until the half.

Sunday

After all my fast running during the week, I ended up taking two rest days and then went out for six miles on Sunday. It went well. I was at Moss Wright Park, which has a two mile loop around the park. I did 3:1 intervals on the first loop, ran nonstop at (or below) goal pace for the next loop, and then did 3:1 intervals again for the last loop. It was hot, so it was a little tiring, but felt good! I ended up averaging 11:36 min/mi for the six miles, or right at goal pace.

Also, congrats to Meb for being the first American to win Boston since the ’80s! And wearing Skechers. (I think I’m about to buy my second pair.) 😀