Sun 10/10 - AM 90 minutes incl. half marathon

The circling of the drain continues. This went far worse than I expected and that's saying something as expectations were low given the lack of workouts specific to this length of race, how crappy the hammie's been feeling the past two weeks and how late I got to bed last night (and every night before that for the past six months basically). Functionally injured at the moment in that I can jog around slowly to my heart's content but any kind of quality running is a bridge too far and leaves my leg a fucking mess for days afterward. As this surely will. Splits tell the story:

5:45

6:04

5:56

6:20

6:24

6:20

6:24

6:12

6:23

6:15

6:15

6:36

6:55 

Settled into survival mode after 4 miles and watched as people passed me one by one the rest of the way. Much as I'd like to call this a glorified tempo run it surely wasn't as I was quite pooped by 9 miles and powerless to do anything to stick with the people rolling past. Course was a mix of scenic rolling back roads and more open exposed stretches near town. Overall quite nice. Fairly stiff wind blowing all day which hit us square in the face at times, not so nice. Nothing about the course or the conditions can be fingered as substantive reasons for how slowly I was going. Worth noting that I averaged a faster pace for this for a full marathon two years ago. The fact that the top woman's master rolled by just after 11 miles is also worth noting. Still won my age group though, and in the venal acquisitive sense the day was a success. Lather rinse repeat six days from now. Maybe I'll regain some semblance of stability and fitness when the godforsaken kiddie season ends (only six more weeks, hooray) but that would assume I'll be doing more regular stretching/core maintenance and getting to bed earlier when that much-anticipated day arrives. The stretching I can imagine, the earlier bedtime not so much.