I decided to find out what my 5k speed was like after the marathon last week, besides who can pass up a free relaxing 5k on a nice Saturday morning. I had charted out the course in google earth and learned that it was going to be short and the last mile was all uphill and was definately going to be work. I figured my best potential competition for the race was going to be Chuck Mitchell (all he had to do was show up and he would beat me). Sure enough, I saw him running his warm-up on the way to the church. The weather was a little cool and breezy but nothing to bad (tech-t and shorts).
Mile #1 - 5:30 - Chuck and another kid took out fast for the first quarter to third of the mile and I was only about 20 yards behind and breathing pretty hard. I knew I would be having to slow down soon enough. After the initial surge Chuck droped the outher kid and I passed him shortly after. You could tell that Chuck (top runner on the Herriman Cross Country team) hasn't ran very many road races, his lines were all over the place. I kept a pretty steady 20 to 30 yards behind him.
Mile #2 - 5:54 - Down hill running through the neighborhoods. I didn't slow down as much as I thought I would, but I knew the uphill was coming soon.
Mile #3 (0.95 miles) - 5:59 (6:23 pace) - I definately don't have the strength yet to push a fast pace, uphill, at this stage in a 5k. Chucks didn't slow down as much as I did and his lead stretched to 50-60 yards. I never looked back to see who was behind me but I never heard footsteps either.
I did a mile or two cool down with Chuck (7 minute pace) and told him that he needs to work on his tangents. I also told him to focus on recovery (and proper eating) and keeping his easy runs easy for cross country this year. He is a good kid and fun to talk to and see at races.
All-in-all I felt pretty good about this race. I havn't done any real speed training since last August and I stayed pretty motivated on pushing the pace despite being in no-mans land. Had it been a full 3.1 miles I figure my time would have been 18:20 +/- and with some focused speed traing and weight training I could be living in the 17's again. | 