I wound up doing a hard 5K on the treadmill today. My scheduled didn't call for a run; I was planning on swimming and then doing some weight training. I can't remember why now, but for some reason I decided to spend 30 minutes running instead. I think it was because I had meant to do a light 3-miles last night but didn't, and I was making up for it. Yeah...that was my rationale.
But instead of a light run, I ended up putting in a best-effort 5K and came just seconds from hitting the 21-minute mark. I didn't start out to do that. I programmed the machine for 40 minutes, did a standard 10 minute-mile warm up, gradually building from a brisk walk to 8.0 mph; was feeling good so I bumped it to 8.7 thinking I'd just hold that for that 2nd mile. As I began mile 3, I realized I still had the energy and had finished a mile (not counting the warm up mile) in 6:55, so I upped the speed to 9.0 just to see. It got hard, but after that mile, my time for the previous 2 miles was now 13:35. I knew I had a shot at 21:00, so I backed it off to 8.6 just to recover for a quarter or half mile before seeing if I had it in me to make a final push.
My heart rate at this point was steady at 165, which I think is under 95%. I was breathing hard and my legs were starting to feel fatigued, but I didn't die during that slower half mile and found myself with only 0.6 to go and exactly 4 minutes left to do it in. I bumped it back up to 9.0, but could only go 1/4 at that pace. I dropped back to 8.7, watching the timer, the distance and trying to calculate if I was going to make it. I went a quarter mile mostly at 8.7, then 8.8. I had the last 1/10 of a mile to go and the timer said 20:20. 1/10 mile in 40 seconds is 9.0 mph. I increased speed, but must've waited too long. 21:00 was approaching and I could tell I wasn't going to make it. I tried increasing to 9.3, but the 21 minute mark passed by and it didn't click over to 3.1 until 21:07.
Arghh!. Ah, but I wasn't disappointed. I hadn't started out to beat 21 minutes and still came pretty close. I didn't even feel particularly primed for the effort, so it left me feeling confident that I'm only 1 or 2 tries away from hitting that goal and I'm sure it's now well within my ability. (20 minutes is a completely different story.)
Cool down consisted of a short walk as my heart rate recovered and then an easy jog at 7.0 until I'd finished another mile for a 5 miles total in 40 minutes.
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I've got some mileage to do this weekend. I'm going to do 5-6 miles tomorrow at marathon pace and then 10 miles on Sunday at my LSD pace. It got me to thinking about what those paces should be for me now.
8:45/mile is what I think my current marathon pace ability should be if I don't cramp up, and that equates to about a 3:49 marathon. If I trained right, I'm pretty sure I could cover the distance at that average pace without much problem. Should have done that in the RnR marathon, but I either didn't train right or didn't run the race right.
If I want to qualify for Boston (age 50), I'll need to be able to do 8:15/mile, which is a 3:35 time over 26.2. That's a little more optimistic, and I'd have to improve a lot, and not just build the mileage.
My half marathon pace seems to be 30 seconds per mile faster than my marathon. As I proved at AFC, I can sustain 8:15/mile pretty comfortably now even without dedicated training, which for 13.1 miles is 1:48. I already know I have it within myself to do better than that, if properly conditioned, and I should shoot for 7:45/mile or a 1:41 half marathon.
My current best 10K pace is 7:15/mile or about 45 minutes for 6.2 miles.
My target 5K pace is 6:45/mile which should break 21 minutes for 3.1 miles. I think I'm there now.
That's an interesting distribution:
5K (3.1mi) pace -- 6:45/mile
10K (6.2mi) pace -- 7:15/mile
20K (12.4mi) pace -- 7:45/mile
40K (24.8mi) pace -- 8:15/mile
+30 seconds per mile for each doubling of race distance. I wonder if that's a typical curve?
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