It's over, man. Let her go.

My completely uneducated, unexpert, unsolicited advice is to not short-change yourself. It looks like you're in a lot better shape now. Anyway, good luck this weekend!

Hard to tell, those equivalency numbers are usually pretty good, but they assume a certain amount of distance-specific training. I think 1:50 might be too conservative, though.

Thanks Joe & Flat. Advice is never unsolicited and based on both of your experience, neither of you are uneducated or in any way not experts!

I think I'd rather go out a little faster with the hope of being able to hold it and/or pick it up in the last 5k, knowing there's the the risk of bombing and finishing slower than I had hoped. If all the stars align and Burt's Vitamin shots do the trick, I may be able to hit my 1:50 goal. I'd hate to take it easy and then not be able to pick it up because my body's gotten used to the slower pace, or having too much at the end and sacrificing some minutes because I went out too slow.

I'm no expert at racing so one day I've got to figure out this drinking while running skill as well as the Gu's, etc. I think I'll need to get some Body Glide when I go out to the running store tomorrow. Vaseline has worked well for me in the past, but I need to get serious. :-)

Nice pace and sounds like nice weather. I think that as long as you keep your head together and don't give up you will do great! Just know you are a champ and you will do well!

If your goal is 1:50 then I say you should start out at that pace(8:23) after a short pre-race warmup. I'm no expert either, but I believe even pacing is the most efficient way to go, especially on longer races. "banking" time always sounds good, but rarely helps. Try setting the auto lap for a mile on your garmin and then use the "avg pace for current lap" on the display as your guide for a nice consistent run. That screen is much more accurate than the "instant" reading and it's a lot easier than you would think to make small adjustments as you go during each mile.

There's my 2 cents :)

Good luck! And definitely go for the bodyglide, it's good stuff.

Steve & RT - Thanks! I suppose an even goal pace is best. If I'm feeling good for the last 5k I can kick it up a notch to finish fast.

I setup the Garmin with similar settings to what you suggest, Mike, for the 5k. The instant pace, I agree, isn't that accurate, but the lap seems to be quite good. The thing I've used the instant for is to see what pace I'm at at that moment. It helps when I see an 8:00 lap pace, for instance, and I want to see if I'm over or under that at that moment. It may not be 100% accurate, especially if you just walked through a water stop, but it gives me some more feedback. I certainly wouldn't rely on it heavily.

In the JASR Half, I had it setup with a field for the AP for the run since I knew what I needed for my goal and the instant to see where I was. I think I'll set it up similar, adding the AP for the lap and I'll likely set the lap to be 1/2 mi. I find that 1/2 mile is better for me so I can get a more fine grain view of my AP.

I'll have to play with the Garmin today and get the fields setup and make sure it's 100% charged!

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. It looks like I could do better than I expect. A PR of any size would make me happy considering my lack of real HM training going into this. I just need to find a skirt to latch on to, I think. ;-)

Yes, that's what we call them. Vitamins.

I'll need another "dose" for tomorrow