Week of March 5-11: 55 miles in 6 days/runs
  Monday: 13.1 miles on a hilly course at 7:43/mi.
  Tuesday: 8.2 miles at 7:27/mi.
  Wednesday: off
  Thursday: 3 easy, 2x2miles at 6:21/mi. avg. (with 2 minutes rest in between), 2 easy
  Friday: 8.2 miles at 7:40/mi.
  Saturday: 7 miles at 7:45/mi.
  Sunday: St. Patrick's Day 8k race

I got in the right kinds of runs this week, though all but one were just ok. I finally got a medium-long hill run in again, did some slightly longer tempo intervals at a faster pace, and ran an 8k race. The tempo intervals went the best. I ran the second mile of the first interval a little too fast (6:17) and paid for it at the beginning of the second interval (my first mile there was 6:26). But I was able to bring the last mile back to 6:21 without, I think, pushing too hard for a workout. My pace for these tempo intervals was only 9 seconds per mile slower than my pace in the 8k race a few days later. But I don't think the intervals were too fast - or at least not by much. They didn't wear me out very much, and I'm sure that I could have run the 8k faster (see below). The hilly medium-long run caused me to bonk a little, presumably because it had been too long since I did it. It's clear that I'm not in good half-marathon shape. Since I'm also going to be really busy for the next few weeks, I may skip the RNR USA half-marathon next weekend. The only good reason not to skip it seems to be that I paid a fair bit of money for it - I originally registered for the full marathon but switched to the half after getting injured in January. But I'm not up to running a very good time anyway, and skipping it would both give me more time and energy to get non-running work done in the next couple weeks, and even just from a running perspective it would enable me to do 2-3 workouts that otherwise I'd have to skip or postpone. I'm thinking it may be smarter to focus on shorter races (maybe up to 10 miles, but mainly 10k and under) in the Spring anyway, and transition in the Summer toward training for a Fall marathon. But I hadn't worked that out yet when I signed up for this half. It would be the second (and most expensive) half I've skipped.

St. Patrick's Day 8k: my time was 30:51, which is a 6:12/mi. pace. It was a PR by 14 seconds, but just ok relative to my current training. My mile paces were uneven: 5:58, 6:11, 6:09, 6:17, 6:16. (My Garmin says I ran exactly 5 miles.) My 5k split was 18:52, which is fine. The second mile has some uphills and several sharp turns, so it's hard to run that fast. But after that I couldn't pick things back up enough. To be honest, once it became clear around halfway that sub-30 (my goal for the race) wasn't going to happen, I failed to muster the guts to finish out the last two miles as strong as I could have. That goal may have been over-ambitious for now. But if I had slept better the night before (my son kept me up) and kept pushing hard to the end, I think I could have run 30 seconds faster. This race suggests that I may be up for a fast 5k in two weeks, especially if I skip the half next weekend; and that I need to emphasize tempo runs to improve my stamina for maintaining a hard pace beyond 2-3 miles, which I knew already.