For some ridiculous reason, I can’t sleep. I’ve been doing tougher workouts than I’ve done in years and I’ll settle into bed around 9 or 10 (thinking I’m tired) and stare at the ceiling or Seinfeld and Office re-runs until one in the morning. Last night, I added a little melatonin to the mix and I think it may have helped. I fell asleep quicker and had a bit of a haze this morning.
I drank my go-to orange juice/water mixer and added an apple to my belly before heading to Shelby Park to meet aspiring runners in training for New Orleans and/or the Country Music marathon. Kevin, Jim and Daniel were there as well (Mark is in Phoenix for the Rock n Roll 1/2, which I’m assuming he crushed). It’s nice to see the guys wearing Crushing Iron gear and more than it being the title of this blog and our documentary film, I feel like it is becoming an attitude with all of us, including our coach, Robbie Bruce, who sent me this pic the other day after his bike workout. 
This morning’s run was eighty minutes, which still kind of makes me chuckle. It’s just so strange to show up for these runs with no doubt in my mind I will be able to handle them. That said, it wasn’t easy.
We started with a 15 minute warm up around a 9 minute pace, then went into our “race pace” tempo (which met some discrepancy because we weren’t sure which race we were emulating) and Jim decided it would be my New Orlean’s Half goal.
I was caught up in a discussion with another guy and didn’t realize Jim and Kevin had taken off ahead of the pack. I looked at my watch and realized it was tempo time and put my head down to catch them cruising at just under an 8 minute pace.
We raced down Davidson Street toward LP field and remarkably I felt fine at that pace considering I had only woken up 30 minutes earlier. After the 15 minute tempo we slowed way down for two minutes before doing another 15 minutes at sub 8. We did one more of these (3 total 15 min tempos at an average of 7:53 each) then cooled down for 16 minutes to hit a total of 80 minutes.
Our overall pace for the run was 8:24, which is pretty damn sweet, and we covered 9.52 miles. It got me thinking.
If I did exactly that at New Orleans, I could add one more 15 minute tempo segment at 7:53 and pretty much finish the entire half marathon around 1:45, which is very encouraging considering I sit here feeling pretty fresh. In reality, my technique will be more like starting at 8:30 for a couple miles before locking in just under 8, then hopefully having a little kick. We’ll see.
Afterwards a few of us went to Bongo Java for an incredible feast on . . . coffee. Now, I will probably go to my Facebook feed and watch people get furious about the NFL Playoffs.