Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

I ran a 5K this morning.  Great conditions - temperature was probably in the high 50s at race start, course was perfectly flat and fast.  My goal was to beat 20 minutes.

I started fast, as I always do, often to my later regret. It didn’t feel crazy fast, but I finished the first mile in 6:01.  I just about held on to that pace the second mile, finished that in 6:08.  At that point I was slightly regretting the superfast start, but at the same time knew that I just about had my PR and sub-20 minute time in the bag, because I could slow down a lot the last mile and still get under my goal.  I did slow down over the last mile, to around 6:37 pace, but still held on and finished pretty strong.  This time I think I passed a couple people the last 200 meters.  To be honest I was concentrating so hard I was barely aware of others at that point.

My best race by far, in terms of age-graded performance.  My overall race pace was 6:16 min/mile — faster than I thought I could do.  I finished the 5K exactly 1:10 faster than I ran my last 5k one month ago, and the course was almost identical.  My aerobic fitness and stamina have improved a lot in that time, and my workouts and overall mileage have improved.

I’ll be recalibrating my workout paces and my goals for the year, but I now feel a lot more confident about attaing my goals of a sub-1:30 half marathon and sub-40 minute 10K, and with enough smart training and some weight loss I think a sub-3:00 marathon may even be in sight.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 1:40 pm 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.