I have a need for speed

So the tri season has come to a close for me. I'm not done with my racing season as I have a 1/2 marathon in 7 weeks. I've spent this week being a bum and calling it a 'recovery' week. How about not-doing-much-of-anything-week. But mentally I've been trying to regroup and sort through my thoughts about this up coming 1/2. Last year I ran this race and I did steady 10:10 min/miles. This season my running has shown me that I can run faster. Last year my only goal was to finish. This year...um...i think i'm scared to make a goal :-) Saying something scary like "I can do this under 2 hours" sorta freaks me out. But I think I can. My excuse is that for so much of my life I've never considered myself much of an athlete much less a 'runner'. I goofed off at athletics, played soccer for fun in high school, and dabbled in some Ultimate in college. I wasn't ever 'fast' though. (my friends do humor me and call me 'rocketpants') By my definition running a 1/2 under two hours requires 'fast-ness'. But the truth is that mental leap to athlete and 'fast' are words I've not had in my vocabulary. Recently I realize that I'm starting to discover that inner athlete. I surprised myself with 8:30 min/miles this last weekend at my sprint tri for 3 miles. And in July surprised myself with just sub 9 min miles for 5 miles. I know part of me not viewing myself as very fast is a head game, so I better get in the game. So maybe just maybe I can run the 1/2 in...errr

Now I just need to figure out the HOW. Throw in a tempo run? Err...now I'm speaking foreign weird language. I don't speak "runner". So I'll spend the weekend reading those runner like books and come up with something. Me doing this on the fly just won't cut it.

It's all just a weird thought to me....running fast.