20-Minute 5K

20 minutes.  Seems like it's light years away.

I ran a treadmill workout today.  I started out thinking I'd just do a best effort 5K after a 10 minute warm up.  I got the warm up in, but I changed my mind about the drill.  I decided, instead, to do a pair of 1.5ers with a breather in between.

I wore my heart monitor, and I was hitting 170 during the last 440 of the first "lap."  My wind felt surprisingly okay, but if my HRmax is 175 (as I've been thinking),  then 170 is about 97% of that.  That's redline.  I was definitely stressing, but I didn't feel like it was for lack of oxygen...yet.

I really wanted to break 10 minutes over that first mile and a half, but the slow wind up at the start put me in a hole.  I did manage to speed up for each of the 1/2 mile legs, but still I finished in 10:12.  That was about as fast as I could sustain through that distance.  I probably could have gutted out one or two more laps (1/4 miler each), but there's no way I would have been able to bring it all the way home for a total of 3 miles.  If I could have, that would only double the time to cover 3 miles: 20:24; and I'd still have a tenth of a mile to go.  I could have broken 21 minutes.  But 20?  That first mile and a half can't be feeling so hard at that pace if I'm to improve to the point of shaving off another whole minute to reach 20.  I can't see it happening anytime soon.

The recovery interval before the second lap was about 2 minutes of walking.  I felt better after 20-30 seconds, but I was not relishing pushing it to the peg again.  I did, though, and my heart climbed quickly back up to the high 160s, even at a slower pace.  I wound up finishing the 3.1 miles in 21:40 not counting the recovery interval.  I know I can finish better than that, but man that 20-minute goal is just so out there in the distance.  I'm beginning to wonder if it's even achievable.

I stretched out and cooled down after, got some water, and then started in on my standard upper body resistance circuit.  I've got my final boot camp session coming up on Monday.  It's a test workout and I want to do well, showing improvement from the benchmarks set at the start.  I plan on just doing a fitness course workout tomorrow afternoon and then a 10-mile run early Sunday morning.  I've got a lot of other projects this weekend: painting, gardening, oil change, continued garage cleanout, windows and screens cleaning...maybe carpet cleaning too if I can find the time.

I'm on my own until Wednesday.  Joan and Quin are off to New York to see Bailey and bring her home.  Going to be interesting being a geographic bachelor.