You are getting better and your time is definitely improving, great job!!

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. I guess it is a big improvement to go from the run/walk to running almost the whole thing.

It is!!  Congrats!

Just a few thoughts.

Have you been doing regular, focused speedwork?  Not informal fartleks but seriously painful stuff that you kind of don't look forward to and are damn glad when it's finished?  I ask because the standard mantra is that more mileage = faster times but that's only true for people that don't have a decent aerobic base.  Once you have a decent aerobic base, more mileage won't make you faster.  The point of more mileage then is so that you can do more speedwork.  For example, you want to limit tempo running to about 10% of total weekly mileage.  If you're putting in 50 miles a week, that's 5 miles but it's only 3 miles if you're doing 30 miles per week.

That ties in with my next thought.  You say you have been running between 9:15 and 9:45.  If I plug those paces into a half marathon, I get 2:01 for a 9:15 pace and 2:07 for a 9:45 pace.  Are you really doing all of your "easy" runs at your half marathon pace?  If so, that indicates that either a) you are running way, way, way too hard on your easy runs or b) you only have one gear.  And usually, a lack of gears is due to a lack of speedwork.  By way of example, my easy pace is 1:20 slower than my half marathon race pace.

Final thought.  Sorry but 30 miles per week for a couple of months isn't 30 miles per week.  If you want to talk about your weekly mileage, look at how much you have run in the last 52 weeks and divide by 52.  That's your weekly mileage.  Too many people increase their mileage for a short period for a race and think that a few weeks or even a few months is sufficient but a base is built over a much longer time frame.

BTW, it's OK to be pissed off about a PR.  Been there, done that.  It will drive you to analyze what you did and make an effort to improve on it next time.

LTH, my easy runs are 10:30-11:30. When the plan called for miles at HM pace, they were on the 9:15-9:45 range.

I ran about 1000 miles in 2014, so 19 miles per week. My mileage increased as the year went on. Ive been averaging 28 mpw in 2016.

As far as quality, I did hill repeats up to 3 minutes at 5k effort, hard effort at the end of some long runs and some long runs with HM pace. The 10 mile long run with 6 at HM pace had way more of a dread factor than any interval workout I've done in the past.

 

Damn, you're good.

i have yet to master typing on a smartphone. Or I have psychic powers