8km "Tempo" Run
Boy, did I ever have trouble waking up this morning! I don't know if it was the rain storm in the middle of the night that woke me up or the steak dinner I had last night, but I could not drag my ass out of bed before 9am (the Garmin Training Centre software shows that my run started at around 8am, but Motionbased shows the actual 9am. I have to check why this is happening...). I still made the morning run, but it was more mid-morning than I had intended.
It was a pleasant 16 Celsius, but quite rainy and very humid as I left. The 1km of walking for warm up was not too nice since that rain felt quite chilly, and when I started off on my run I really felt sluggish. My intention was to run at race pace (whatever that is since I've never raced), but glancing down at my watch after the first half kilometre I saw a pretty slow 5:43/km average. The knee felt OK, though some stiffness still lingering in there, and it was at this point that I had to make a choice: pick up the pace and fight through the sluggish feeling, or slow up and make it through the 8km at about 6:00/km pace. I decided to push a little to see if I could get the average pace down to 5:30...
After another kilometre I glanced down and saw that I'd managed to speed up to about 5:22/km and was starting to get into the run. Now I decided to see if I could go even faster and thought that 5:15/km was a reasonable goal. My heart rate was in the 160's, as expected, and the rain was starting to let up a little. As I made my way around Stan Wadlow Park and headed for Taylor Creek I again looked at the Garmin and saw I had managed to reduce my average pace to 5:12. Now I got really ambitious - why not see how close I could get to 5:00/km and hold it for as long as possible? I knew this would be hard, but was up for it.
As I ran down the hill into Taylor Creek Park I passed a few runners who waved hello. It's amazing how this camaraderie can put a little extra something in your step. At about the 3km mark I noticed that I had my average pace below 5:00 and was now determined to hold this for at least the first 5km since I was definitely starting to feel it. My heart rate was now over 170 and it was only a matter of time before I'd have to ease off a little.
Happy to report that my 5km time ended up being 24:38, at a pace of 4:55/km. This will be considered my record for the moment, though it was not race conditions or anything, and gives me a new standard for my training. My previous 8km run back at the beginning of August was similar in effort and the first 5km of that run ended up at 26:02 (5:12 pace). On that occasion I had to slow up for the last 3 kilometres, and those ended up at 5:38/km, though with a sizable hill included. This time I wanted to avoid the hill on account of the knee and wanted to manage at a minimum 5:30 pace.
After about a half-kilometre my heart rate returned to something approaching normal and my pace was fluttering in the high 5:20's. Now I had visions of bringing that down to the teens and started to pick up the pace again. I ended up passing some other runners which helped out and managed to complete the 3km in 15:27, a 5:09 average pace! The entire 8km run was pretty close to less than 5:00 per kilometre - a total of 40:05! I am not ready to run this pace for an entire 10k, but it certainly feels good to be able to run this far and get that close to 5:00 pace. I had a full 2km walk back home, so the total for the day (including all the walking) was 11.11km, which is a lot for me.
In all this was a great run for me and definitely felt like a workout. Tomorrow is another off day, then a slow 8km on Monday.
Garmin don't lie:
The google image of my route.
It was a pleasant 16 Celsius, but quite rainy and very humid as I left. The 1km of walking for warm up was not too nice since that rain felt quite chilly, and when I started off on my run I really felt sluggish. My intention was to run at race pace (whatever that is since I've never raced), but glancing down at my watch after the first half kilometre I saw a pretty slow 5:43/km average. The knee felt OK, though some stiffness still lingering in there, and it was at this point that I had to make a choice: pick up the pace and fight through the sluggish feeling, or slow up and make it through the 8km at about 6:00/km pace. I decided to push a little to see if I could get the average pace down to 5:30...
After another kilometre I glanced down and saw that I'd managed to speed up to about 5:22/km and was starting to get into the run. Now I decided to see if I could go even faster and thought that 5:15/km was a reasonable goal. My heart rate was in the 160's, as expected, and the rain was starting to let up a little. As I made my way around Stan Wadlow Park and headed for Taylor Creek I again looked at the Garmin and saw I had managed to reduce my average pace to 5:12. Now I got really ambitious - why not see how close I could get to 5:00/km and hold it for as long as possible? I knew this would be hard, but was up for it.
As I ran down the hill into Taylor Creek Park I passed a few runners who waved hello. It's amazing how this camaraderie can put a little extra something in your step. At about the 3km mark I noticed that I had my average pace below 5:00 and was now determined to hold this for at least the first 5km since I was definitely starting to feel it. My heart rate was now over 170 and it was only a matter of time before I'd have to ease off a little.
Happy to report that my 5km time ended up being 24:38, at a pace of 4:55/km. This will be considered my record for the moment, though it was not race conditions or anything, and gives me a new standard for my training. My previous 8km run back at the beginning of August was similar in effort and the first 5km of that run ended up at 26:02 (5:12 pace). On that occasion I had to slow up for the last 3 kilometres, and those ended up at 5:38/km, though with a sizable hill included. This time I wanted to avoid the hill on account of the knee and wanted to manage at a minimum 5:30 pace.
After about a half-kilometre my heart rate returned to something approaching normal and my pace was fluttering in the high 5:20's. Now I had visions of bringing that down to the teens and started to pick up the pace again. I ended up passing some other runners which helped out and managed to complete the 3km in 15:27, a 5:09 average pace! The entire 8km run was pretty close to less than 5:00 per kilometre - a total of 40:05! I am not ready to run this pace for an entire 10k, but it certainly feels good to be able to run this far and get that close to 5:00 pace. I had a full 2km walk back home, so the total for the day (including all the walking) was 11.11km, which is a lot for me.
In all this was a great run for me and definitely felt like a workout. Tomorrow is another off day, then a slow 8km on Monday.
Garmin don't lie:
The google image of my route.
Labels: running
posted by Vava at
3:13 PM
3 Comments:
Nice times,and glad you got out of the house in the morning!
Beats running in the soupy humidity I did this morning.
Great job (I think) LOL -- Damn metric system and my terrible math skills. Seriously, that is a very nice pace.
ROFLMAO I was going to say the same thing as BR BUT 24:38 for a 5k is killer!! AWESOME job!
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