Saturday 10/24 - 4 miles

I ran a super easy 4 miles at 8:00 pace just to loosen up and do some stretching afterwards. I've gotten about 9 - 9.5 hrs of sleep each of the last two nights which should really help me out for the race tomorrow. It looks like racetime temperature should be somewhere between 55 and 60. The race starts at 7:00 am so it shouldn't get too warm. My 1/2 marathon PR from 2 years ago is 1:17:39. When I ran that race I had no idea what kind of shape I was in and my goal was just to run 6:00 pace. I had started that race at about 6:10 pace and dropped down into the mid 5:40's by mile 10 before just hanging on the last couple of miles. Last year I ran a terrible race here. I'm not sure what happened, but I could just never pick the pace up and I ran 1:19:xx. My goals for tomorrow are to break 1:17 and hopefully be under 1:16. Breaking 1:17 would require me to average 5:52 pace and 1:16 would be 5:48 pace. The course is 3 loops on Allen Parkway and isn't the fastest course out there. My goal is to start out 5:55 - 6:00 the first mile and just gradually drop the pace each mile. I want to average 5:52- 5:55 for the first loop, 5:45 - 5:50 for the 2nd loop and hopefully sub 5:40 pace for the 3rd loop. If I can't pick up the pace then I'll get to a pace I can maintain and hopefully still come in with a new PR.