I ran the water tank road with Larry early this afternoon. We wanted to get in some downhill in preparation for the Spectrum 10K next Saturday. We took it easy on the way up, including walking some of the steeper sections, so we could push the pace a little on the downhill. I didn't risk pushing it too hard on the dirt portion of the downhill, as the footing wasn't all that good. In fact, I only pushed hard for two sections. On the steep paved section down to 800 E I pushed as fast as I dared, holding back so I didn't end up kissing the road. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I averaged a 5:46/mi pace on this section. We then recovered as we ran over to 400 E at about an 8:36/mi pace. The final push was downhill on 1600 N between 400 E and Main. I think the downhill grade there is nearly perfect. It's a pretty good downhill but I didn't have to expend any energy at all putting on the brakes to not lose control. I averaged 5:40/mi for this 1/2 mile stretch, slightly faster than the steeper downhill.
I've been told the first half of the Spectrum 10K this year is steeper downhill, with a more gradual downhill the second half. My first goal is to set a new 5K PR (less than 20:13) in the first 5K of the race, with a stretch goal of breaking a 40 minute 10K overall. I figure to do this I'd need to average around a 6:00 minute pace the first 5K (18:12), and then try to hang on and average a 7:00 pace (21:42) the second 5K. This would still be a real stretch for me. I've trained all winter for the first time since I started running again, and I've been putting in record mileage for me recently. This week I ran nearly 64 miles, and I've run over 256 miles in the last 5 weeks since I decided to run Boston this year. I've been focusing on marathon training, so I'm concerned about having enough speed for this 10K. I plan to run shorter, faster miles next week as I taper for the Spectrum 10K. We'll see how these runs go, but today's experiment running some short, fast downhill sections at a sub-6:00 minute pace gave me some hope for a PR performance next Saturday.
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