5K and 10K Time Goals Revisited

One more treadmill workout before hitting the pavement and trails this weekend.

8 1/2 miles today makes it just over 21 miles for the week.  Every running session was a good one and today was no exception.  I varied the pace and the incline across a pretty wide range, venturing into anaerobic territory but staying mostly aerobic. Did 75 minutes all told, including warmups and cool down, plus 15 minutes on the elliptical.  I watched Duke play UVA in the ACC tournament quarter finals while working out, which was nice.  (Duke won, but not handily.)

I was musing today about my not-so-arbitrary 5K and 10K time goals, and wondering if they aren't set too high and beyond my reach at this age with my genetics.

For a 20-minute 5K, I'd have to run at an average pace of 6:27 for 3 miles.  I can hold that pace for maybe a mile, but not much more and certainly not for 3.1.  Despite all my running, including speedwork, it would seem that incremental improvements are more marginal.  I'm going to have to make a pretty big leap in improvement to go from where my best is right now (about 21:25 I think) to get to 20.  A 21-minute 5K seems doable.  That's a 6:47 pace, and I can conceive of being able to sustain that for 3 miles.  Not right now, mind you, but perhaps soon.

The 45-minute 10K requires a 7:15 pace.  That's not so scary to me, mentally, but I have yet to be able to sustain that after about 30 minutes before I start to redline.  In some statements, I've adjusted my time goal downward to 46 minutes, which is a 7:25 pace.  That seems entirely feasible.  A 7:35 pace (or 47-minute 10K) might even be possible over the 2nd half of a half marathon if I put my mind and training to it.  I feel comfortable at a 7:30-ish pace and I think it's just a matter of continued conditioning work to help me sustain that for longer and longer.

Running faster, though, into the sub-7 minute/mile range is NOT comfortable and I'd have to build quite a bit more heart/lung capacity and more fast-twitch muscles to make that realistic in the 5K distance regime.  I'm just not sure that's in me at this stage of life.

And that bugs me.  After the marathon -- and after recovery -- I'm going to turn my attention to these shorter distances for a little while and see what sort of speed improvements I can make and whether or not those 20-minute and 45-minute time goals are achievable.