AM: 10 miles total. Phillies Charities 5k in 16:52. A 16-second PR. 4 up/3 down.
Megan and I headed down to South Philadelphia pretty early. I got in 4 miles of warmup, some stretching and one stride (I was looking for a bathroom, but decided it was nerves and held it and didn't get in any more strides). I peeled off my warmups and got pretty cold as we started 3-4 minutes late.
The start was chaotic with young kids going out at sub-5:00 pace. I ran in crowd for maybe a quarter mile before seeing the lead pack. I was perhaps 15 second behind them and tried to speed up without burning too much energy. It gradually broke up before the mile and I started picking some people off while the leader took off (he ran 15:52). Went through mile 1 around 5:19-5:22 and kept everything fairly steady in effort from there. I passed about three guys around mile 2 and tried to keep it up. With a few turns and rough roads I got slightly out of my groove.
The final stretch is about a third of a mile so I could see the finish, which seemed forever away. I couldn't catch the guys in front of me but I wasn't too concerned. I was on 5:22 pace on my watch and was pretty sure I was on target for sub-16:45 (my A+ goal). I split a 5:37 on my watch for mile 3. WHAT?! Long? Bad tagents? Aliens? I split very long (1.04). Didn't matter. I was looking at a clock that I thought would be in the 16:30 range and it was around 16:48 and I had a small piece of real estate to cover. I slid in around 16:53/16:54, my lungs burning a bit from the cold but recovered fairly well.
My first time breaking 17 minutes in the 5k and my first certified 5k. I have chased it somewhat seriously for about a year but never really understood you have to be able to run about 3.5-4 miles of fairly long intervals at 5:20-5:22 and for shorter intervals you need to be able to run a good deal faster than that. I don't know how many more "Minute Barriers" I have in my running career in the 5k, so this has me pretty happy but hungry. It will likely take years to break 16 minutes and it's highly unlikely I'll get very far into the 15-minute range but that won't stop me from trying.
Strava/Garmin smoothed rich, chocolatey goodness
5:21, 5:23, 5:26, 32.2 (plus 10 seconds for tangent tax/certified ensured length)
5:19, 5:25, 5:37, 32.2 (Garmin manual splits)
PM: 4-mile shakeout. HR 128.
+ Stretching and core at the gym after
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