Sunday, August 12, 2007

Feels good to finally run another 5k

Ran a 16:51. Time wasn't anything spectacular but I was satisfied with how things went considering it was 90 degrees at the start (0700) and noone to accompany me up front. The goal going in was to break 17 minutes. I knew this task would be a challenge because I didn't decrease the miles going into the race and also haven't been doing much speedwork. A perfect way to determine base fitness.

When the race started about 10 guys took off like it was a mile race. I knew that these were folks who either never ran a 5k or wanted some glory of leading a race. About a half mile into the run I found myself running alone. I hit the 1st mile in 5:24. I was hoping to see 5:18-5:20 for the first mile. I tried to pick up the pace on the 2nd mile but a right turn into a slight headwind got me struggling to maintain the effort. I came through mile 2 in 10:50 (5:26). On the third mile the legs were feeling okay, but the breathing started to get heavier. When I reached the 3rd mile mark in 16:18 (5:28) I gave it all I got knowing that it would be close to running sub-17. Looking back I ran a fairly even-pace race. It would have been nice to run negative splits, but how often does that happen in a 5k.

Overall, it was another good week of running. Two consecutive weeks at 70 miles has me confident that my fitness is coming along.

Here's how the week went:

Mon: 8.5M easy
Tues: 11M w/ 5 sets of (2 x 200m hard w/ 200m recovery + 400m hard w/ 400m recovery); avg'd 35-36 sec. for 200s and 74-75 sec. for 400s
Wed: 8.5M easy
Thur: 11.6M w/ 5 x 5min. @ ~10k pace w/ 2min. recovery jogs
Fri: 9.5M easy
Sat: 8.1M easy
Sun: 13M w/ 5K in 16:51

Weekly Total: 70.2 miles in 7 sessions

1 comment:

Eric said...

Nice race, and a solid couple of weeks training. If I didn't know better I'd say you were running out of things to do over there!

It will be exciting to see what you can pull together for the Army 10-miler. Eight weeks is a good amount of time. Good luck!