AM: 5 with strides, track race tonight.
PM: 5 miles, including a 3200 at the University of Tampa.
This was a lowkey event, run in a single heat. The closest I've run to this distance was the 2 mile in high school, and my intention was just to lock in with fast runners and knock out two miles (well, 3200) as quickly as possible.
My training partner Lee gave me another talking to on Tuesday about not racing against the clock, sticking with the competition, etc. I promised him this was a good race to implement that approach, and I did my best to stick to it.
I expected the race to go out fast, but after 200 meters the pace felt fairly conservative. So on the backstrech I took the lead and led the group for the next 300 meters or so. The first lap passed in 1:11-1:12, and shortly after that the reality settled on me that I couldn't hang with that and expect to finish in one piece. The train passed me by over the next 400, and I slowed a second or so per mile.
Normally I'm pretty good about maintaining my pace, but in the humidity it's very hard to run an aggressive pace and stick with it. I don't think starting hard had any seriously negative impact, but I don't think it helped massively either. I felt a tangible wall, right around 5:00 pace. I ran mostly 75 second 400s, and felt OK, but my training right now is not optimized for sustaining paces much faster than that.
All in all though, this was a positive race. I ran a full week of mileage and hung around better than I did in my last 5k. I came through 1600 in 4:56, and at that point I focused on keeping my time under 10 minutes. I hit the 7th lap in 8:46, and was able to close in 71-72.
The most important thing for tonight was to adjust myself to running much faster than 5:55 pace. My family came out to cheer, and my older daughter ran 800 meters of the cooldown with me. My friends made a big deal of that, and that was something I could really be proud of.
| 