A.M. My good old friend and training partner Ben Crozier was in town. He joined me this morning. This helped quite a bit, as Ted was out of town, and my Uneventful Half-Marathon would have been very uneventful otherwise. Ben is still not married, so Sarah and I gave him a lot of teasing about it, as well as practical advice. Even my son Benjamin joined, and offered some of his. Benjamin joined us for the first 2 miles. The first one was rather uneventful even for Benjamin - 8:08. On the second he decided to show class and gradually wound it up hitting a 7:24 split, total time 15:32. Then we ran another 8 at a slightly faster pace. I gave Ben a long lecture on the importance of sleep, and taking it easy on easy runs. He argued with me that he needed to do more speed work, then he'd be faster. I just has a hard time believing that a former 15:45 5 K runner that is not currently overweight would have those issues, and suggested a test. We ran a bit at what he thought was his 5 K race pace. He ran about 0.1 at 5:20 pace, which was about what I expected to see. Then after some rest, and further into the run, I did another demonstration setting a 6:00 pace and asking him to hold it for as long as he could. He made it through 500 meters, which was also about what I expected to see. This showed that the reason he recently raced a half marathon at 6:43 pace was more in not being able to hold the pace, than in the lack of speed. The main reasons for such a failure are lack of aerobic conditioning, lack of sleep, and lack of proper carbo-replenishment. So he is going to work on all three. Dropped Ben off 10 miles total into the run (1:13:22), then added another 3.11 with 8 strides in the middle, total time for the half was 1:34:58, 7:14.63 avg. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 14:49, 1.05 with Julia in 10:36, then put Jacob in the stroller and ran 3.62 in 27:08.
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