Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

I ran a 5K yesterday, my first race in ten months, and following eight months of little running.  It went better than I expected.  I am very encouraged.

I finished in 20:33, only five seconds off my previous 5K last June.  That run came after several months of regular running, and averaging well over 20 miles a week for eight weeks or more before the run.  This time I did not start running regularly again until just a few weeks before the race, and even then I’ve only been running twice a week.  Obviously the cross training — swimming, weights, and use of various gym machines, including the stationary bike — have kept my aerobic capacity up and sustained me despite the lack of pure running practice.

There were nearly 1200 runners in the race, and it was not easy taking a spot near the starting line because of all the kids jockeying for positions.  I was determined to get off to a fast start and didn’t want to get bogged down and cut off from the top 30 or so runners in the crowd.  As it was, the first 300 yards was a bit of a melee, and I found myself going faster forward and sideways than I wanted just to position myself correctly.  After the first quarter mile the crowd thinned.  I could tell there were about 30 to 40 runners ahead of me, with a very few sprinting out way beyond the rest, a smaller group slowly increasing the gap with my position, and a group that was more or less running at the same pace as me.  After half a mile I felt like I’d started too fast, with my legs feeling the start of a lactic acid attack.  I eased just a bit, but I still hit the mile mark at 6:20, the same as last time and faster than I’d intended.

I eased a bit, still trying to keep up with the runners around me, but I found myself moving backward just a bit, passing a few but being passed by a few more.  By 2 miles I was a bit over 13 minutes.  At that point I just tried to hold on, and did O.K. for most of the rest of the race.  I tried to finish strong but was outkicked by a teenage girl in the last 50 yards (the blows to the male ego . . .).  My final time of 20:33 was good for 49th place overall (out of a total race tally of 1167, I think), and 7th out of 55 in the 40-44 year old male age group.

So, although I’d like to do better, given my lack of recent running practice, my eight month battle with Achilles tendonitis, and the slight cold I picked up 36 hours before the race,  I was very pleased.  I think a sub-20 minute 5K is in sight.  My plan: lose 5 pounds, run 3 times a week, with some limited emphasis on speed intervals and lactic threshold improvement, continue strength training with moderate weights, and get a few sessions of swimming and/or biking in each week with an emphasis on building endurance.  If I stick to that I can meet my sub-20 minute goal by mid-summer, I think.  The next goal will be sub-19 minute 5K and/or a 40 minute 10K.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 8:53 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.