I haven't been running as much as last year but compensated by eating more so I was solidly fueled for my training, result is an extra 15 pounds, maybe a few more. Looking back, I averaged 30 miles per month leading up to this race except for March, when I realized I had a half marathon in a month so piled on the long runs and frequency and got up to 67 miles in March. Did some race type efforts on a couple training runs and determined that I should be able to run faster than 7:00/mile but slower than 6:30/mile. My goal was thus to go under 1:30, planned to run with the 1:30 pace group and see what happened.

Started deliberately easy, felt way easy, stupid easy, so it was only a little faster than recommended and the 1:30 pace group was 30s or a minute back in the first couple miles, no worries though, there were lots of steady running people around. Held steady ~6:45 pace for first 7 miles. Mile 8 sucked, was 7:06 but with a lot of effort and led to next 3 miles averaging mid 6:50's. Also during this mile 10-12 period there were a couple waves of, presumably, the stronger parts of the 1:30 pace group coming through, I didn't care, was on track to hold pace and finish around 1:29, goal met. Finally stepped it up a little in the last mile when the endless assault of little uphills ended.

Hill adjusted pace (GAP) was less than 1% faster than average for first half, thus less than 1% slower than average for second half. Last year I went 5% faster than average for the first half, this year was a lot more enjoyable.

Run more, eat less, maybe drink less beer

lack of proper preparation, performed pretty much exactly as training runs indicated I should.