Heart of Holladay 5 K. 16:29, 11th place. Very competitive race today, and on top of that I did not run a good one. Decided to try an experiment - go out slower. In the past, this has unfailingly resulted in slowing down even further at the end, but I wanted to see if anything has changed. It has not. First two miles - 5:06 (slight up), 5:09 (down) with Nate Hornok. Felt like a tempo, almost. Then the hill came. I made to to 12:20 into the race with Nate - about the middle of the hill. Then the muscles just refused to go. Third mile in 5:38. Adjusted for the hill, it was worth about 5:23. No kick on the last 0.1, although I tried. Got passed by Steve Ashbaker, Tim Stringfellow, and Josh Steffen. Finished, and immediately ran back to meet Benjamin. The hill that killed me killed him too. Both of us need to work on hills. He finished in 25:11 - would have been 20 second faster without the fits. We are going to work on it. Then went back on the course with Steve Ashbaker and did a tempo. We ran it in 18:08 at marathon pace effort, and it felt very comfortable. I am indeed suffering from the Mike Kirk syndrome - not much difference between 5 K and marathon pace. Afterwards, a long cooldown. Ran with the kids at home, and then a mile with ankle weights at night. So this race along with the other two 5 Ks. show that I have about a 7-10 minute anaerobic window at the start of a 5 K to run fast. If do not use then, I cannot use it later for some odd reason. Weird - would not expect that in a marathoner. The question is what to do about it. I decided to try a new approach. The true reason I want my 5 K to be faster is so my marathon would go up with it. That means I should try to raise my aerobic capability, and not worry too much about anaerobic. So I decided to try something that Lydiard suggest, and that has actually worked for me on a couple of occasions in the past (December/January 2002, and summer of 1985) - daily tempo runs of about 6 miles at marathon pace for aerobic conditioning. I'll try it for the next two weeks to see if it does me any good. | 