Yesterday's plan was to run an easy 4 miles in preparation for the hard weekend long run. But since Thursday was an easy run, I turned Friday into a tempo workout that turned into a race.
After warming up for a good 10 minutes, I started into a moderately paced jog. The first mile felt weird since I felt a little nauseous, but that faded. For some reason, I got it into my head that I wanted to see where I stood at my 5K distance. I recently saw how Christy did the Iron Girl 5K in a time better than my PR, and that apparently wasn't even her best effort. And then Michael amazed me with a 1st place finish in a recent race with a sub-20 minute time. Those reports motivated me since I've been wanting to try to work on trying to get my 5K time down to 20 minutes...eventually.
At first, a year ago, I was lopping big chunks of time off of my 5K efforts. But then I hit a wall, and it's been difficult to gain any more ground. I haven't been specifically working on it, especially during the last 18 weeks since my focus has been on distance, endurance running. But I still do speedwork and so feel my 5K and 10K times ought to still be improving. That is unless I'm closing in on some physical ceiling.
I could run 19:something minute 5Ks in high school, but have never seen anything like that since. Even during my mid to late 20s when I got back into running and was practically only running 5Ks and 10Ks, I lost touch with 20, even 21, minute 5Ks.
Well, my PR up to yesterday was 21:23. That's unofficial. The only official 5K I've run since I restarted all this was the Carlsbad 5000. I didn't put everything on the line since I was running 4 more races that morning (All Day 25K), but it marked my official best 5K at 21:31. For competitive reference, Christy's Iron Girl 5K time was 21:22, and Michael's "Give Your Heart to Monarch" 5K time was 19:54. Wow!
So with that for motivation, I decided to see what I could do.
Excuse #1: I wasn't peaked and primed for a best effort. My mileage is up there and I'd run the 3 days prior with some strong workouts, so I was less than fresh. Weight lifting and spinning had also taken their demands...
Excuse #2: I haven't been training my anaerobic or lactate threshold systems much. I've been focused more on my aerobic conditioning and leg strength in preparation for the marathon.
Excuse #3: I'm a wimp. The "beast" starts to jump on my back and I lack the machine-like resolve to push through it.
So, the result? 21:15...and that hurt. I did the first mile in around 7 minutes. I could have done that faster but I was saving myself for the latter half. Mile 2 took 6:53 and I must've covered the final 1.1 at a 6:40 pace.
Within a minute of finishing, I felt great, so my recovery conditioning is pretty good. But the last mile and a half was filled with anguish and doubt. And to run it in 20 minutes would mean I'd have to average 6:27 over the entire distance, which is a pace I never touched even for a bit on this run. Getting to 21 minutes would mean not loafing or saving anything during that first mile, which I can imagine doing with a little practice. I'd need to average 6:45 to do that.
I'm not planning any official 5Ks at this point, but after the marathon, my next hope is to run the Scripps Ranch 4th of July 10K. I may look around for a 5K of opportunity to shoot for. But that's all for later. For now, the marathon's the focus.
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No running today. I'm taking Quin to Kobey's and then Bob & Tami are due to arrive for the day before they head up for Disneyland tomorrow. We're all going to Garyn's wedding too.
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