Fast and long
I’m officially faster.
All year we’ve been doing trail races, with little standard distances. Today I finally got a chance to put the pedal to the metal (in my still basically slow kind of way) and do something about my 5K time, dropping it from around 26:10 to 23:55 today. Of course I still can’t pace, especially not at sub-8:00/mile, so I went out way harder than my plan, spotting a 6:05 pace on my GPS before backing back to around 7:10-7:20/mile. My first mile went by in 7:10. The next mile was slower, but more like my target, 7:30. The third mile was punishment for my too fast start and my average pace faded off but was still under 8:00. It was only some fast little kid laboring along on my tail that propelled me up the final ‘hill’ to the finish.
That reminds me, when I was a kid the fastest runners could run less that 8 minutes for a single mile that they’d make us do in Phys-ed. I never could. Today I ran 3 miles in a row less that 8 minutes. It’s a small little running milestone in my mind.
There’s not much to say about a 5K. It’s over so fast, but man do they hurt. Back to long slow trail miles for me.
5K PR
Speaking of which, on the other end of the spectrum, at the least the other end for us, we had a great 17.5 mile run on Christmas day as we build back up to marathon level running. This 3hr 40 min run was at Lake Chabot, starting near Skyline Blvd (high) and running down and around the lake, finishing with the climb back up. Total gain/loss was about 3000ft and by the end I was pretty beat. I guess that’s about my endurance limit right now.
Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders, Marathons, Running, Trail Running
