Gearing Up for a Half

Actually, that should be "slightly gearing up" or "not gearing up enough".

Anyway, after the 10K race on Oct. 8th, I took 8 days off and then went out and did 400 x 4 and 800 x 2 with the X-country girls at a pretty good pace, and then intervals the next night - 1600, 1000 x 2, 800 x 2, which proved to be too much, too soon. Developed a slight pain in my upper hamstring or lower glute, somewhere in there, which gets better and worse and is rather annoying.

Took it easy for a week (better) than ran a 5k time trial in 20:19, which was a good run, but sent the glute back to "worse" territory.
Took it easy for another week and then did the interval workout, but not all out, then 3 more rest.easy days, followed by a half marathon done at a tempo pace at the club's annual run and barbecue on Nov. 5th. Ran it in 1:46:48, or 5:03/k pace, which was just what I wanted to do. The glute was getting sore the last 5k, but wasn't too bad. Anyway, I needed to see if I could run 21k at a decent pace.

Test was a success, so last week and this week has been just long, slow runs. Plan to jog wednesday night, not do the workout, then rest for three days before the race on Sunday.
Sooo, I'll be able to run but almost certainly not as fast as I would like to. Hopefully I'll be able to get under 1:35. The age group is 60 and above, so I won't win it and probably won't be in the top 6, which is where the prizes are. I was 6th last year with a 1:33. (1st 10 years ago with a 1:23.)
In any case, it's my favorite race so I'll try to enjoy it.