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back on the horse
This morning I ran my first race since the Kendall Mountain Run last July, a low-key local Earth Day 5k. As I've only been running consistently for a couple of months, and haven't done any speedwork other than strides, I wasn't expecting much - and my run lived up to my expectations! :-) On the other hand, it was a lovely (though warm) day to be running on the river trail, I got in a good workout, I made my ad-hoc goal of "no mile slower than 9 minute pace", and my HRM performed well enough that I can reasonably use my highest HR+5bpm as my new HRmax.
By low-key, I mean that there weren't race numbers, or recorded times or places, though there was a finish line clock and mile markers which, surprisingly, matched my Garmin pretty well. I lined up in the middle of the pack in an attempt to keep myself from going out too fast, which didn't actually work, but I don't think I paced too horribly. The course was on the (paved) river trail, out upstream and back downstream, which made for generally uphill with a tailwind out and downhill with a headwind back, though there were bumps here and there and overall there's not much elevation change.
My splits were 7:50, 8:31, 8:22, and 8:21 pace for the last 0.1 mile, for a total of 25:35 on the clock. This is my slowest 5k since I started keeping track ten years ago, though I seem to recall running about that time in a 5k in Australia when I was in grad school. Still, I'm happy that I could get out and race (sort of!) again. I feel as though I did as well as I could - I was nauseous the entire second half, which is about right for a 5k for me, and I felt limited by my stride/turnover rather than my lungs, which makes sense considering I've just been doing easy runs. Less than a year ago I ran a half marathon at pretty much the same pace, so I'm hoping things will improve!
Using it as a training-pace gauge suggests that I should be running slower in training than I've been doing, which is odd because usually I run much more slowly than the calculators suggest I should. However, my training runs are in the correct HR range (based on my new HRmax) and so I think that this result is due to being limited by speed and power. Hopefully doing a little more speedwork will improve this - I'd like to start doing our club track workouts again, as I enjoyed them last summer, but wanted to get some consistent running in my legs first. And hopefully once I get back into speedwork, the speed will follow!
By low-key, I mean that there weren't race numbers, or recorded times or places, though there was a finish line clock and mile markers which, surprisingly, matched my Garmin pretty well. I lined up in the middle of the pack in an attempt to keep myself from going out too fast, which didn't actually work, but I don't think I paced too horribly. The course was on the (paved) river trail, out upstream and back downstream, which made for generally uphill with a tailwind out and downhill with a headwind back, though there were bumps here and there and overall there's not much elevation change.
My splits were 7:50, 8:31, 8:22, and 8:21 pace for the last 0.1 mile, for a total of 25:35 on the clock. This is my slowest 5k since I started keeping track ten years ago, though I seem to recall running about that time in a 5k in Australia when I was in grad school. Still, I'm happy that I could get out and race (sort of!) again. I feel as though I did as well as I could - I was nauseous the entire second half, which is about right for a 5k for me, and I felt limited by my stride/turnover rather than my lungs, which makes sense considering I've just been doing easy runs. Less than a year ago I ran a half marathon at pretty much the same pace, so I'm hoping things will improve!
Using it as a training-pace gauge suggests that I should be running slower in training than I've been doing, which is odd because usually I run much more slowly than the calculators suggest I should. However, my training runs are in the correct HR range (based on my new HRmax) and so I think that this result is due to being limited by speed and power. Hopefully doing a little more speedwork will improve this - I'd like to start doing our club track workouts again, as I enjoyed them last summer, but wanted to get some consistent running in my legs first. And hopefully once I get back into speedwork, the speed will follow!