Then, in the shower, a light bulb moment interrupted my solo rendition of “we are the champions”. If my recorded average pace was correct, how could I have run 5k in the record time? It would have been somewhat slower.
So Strava doesn’t analyse the first 5k run but the best 5k run at anytime during the run? That means I’ve been running wrong all this time. D’oh!
What I’ve been doing for a 5k (or 10k for that matter) is setting out to do a good 5k time from the go, as you would in a race, or parkrun. As soon as the audio cue tells me I’ve done 5k, I’ve tended to put the brakes on for a bit of a warm down run (between 0.5 to 1k extra). Wrong!
The difference this time was I felt in the mood to carry on at the same pace, so it seems the PB wasn’t the first 5k segment but the final 5k segment, ignoring the slowest segment at the beginning. Therefore the average pace over the full 5.5k is slower than the average pace over the last and best 5k.
So, in future, when I feel like setting a 5k PB, I’ll run a 6k route and trot the first 1k and only start pacing myself for 5k once the cue comes in for the first 1k.
Is that right? I mean, it seems obvious now but why didn’t I think to think like an app? 😳
Written by
Ian5K
Graduate10
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😂 glad you’ve worked it out. You’ll have the whole run analysed and reported on for best km, best Mike, best random segment. Just go out and enjoy your runs, Strava and any sports watch, will do all the calculations for you. Happy running 🤗
Yep... Strava sucks 🤣. I think connect, Nike et al all do this as well.
It depends how you want to do it... and for us mere mortals it’s difficult to have that 5k PB nailed to the first 5k of a run (I think mine was three quarters of the way through a 10 miler). I do my warmup, save it and then go again for the run itself... but there’s no real need to do this.
It’s like a sliding window of 5k, isn’t it? Now I’ve just remembered some months back, I set a PB for 5k on a 10k and I wondered how that happened. It was probably on a flat bit with a long bit of downhill.
I just have the free Strava version, really to remember my efforts over the months, seeing what my friends are doing, and having a bit of fun with entering the monthly challenges. That’s all you need as a leisure runner, I think.
Ha, yes, I think mine last week was 2-7km of an 8km run, far too hard to calculate while running so I just see it as a nice surprise at the end of the run if I’m going longer than 5km now!
My best 5k time, by some margin, came in the second half of my fastest 10k, simply because I was hammering downhill (241m elevation loss over 5km) in search of a sub-60 10k.
And to those who regard that as cheating, you're probably right, but bear in mind that I'd just run 194m elevation gain over the preceding 4km!
I spend a lot of time running up and down hills... ⛰️🏃♀️⛰️🤣
There’s not much sweeter than a gradual downward incline for a bit of speed - but there’s some killer hills here too. Some of these I prefer going up than down on account of my knees! 🙂
Top runners train using negative splits - posh term that means they run slower at the beginning and gradually get faster. This means they can warm their muscles gradually, pace themselves over the distance and have some energy left in the bank for a sprint finish. I don't find it easy (sprint finish?) but it's worth aiming for.
I like getting the negative splits, Speedy. Only, we are surrounded by long hills and if I go down one I have to come back up, and negative splitting goes west. 😆
It’s all very weird isn’t it! From just a running perspective, I know that I need to run about 1k before I start to speed up, so yes, I’d need to do 6k to get a good 5k time. I think. Oh it’s all very confusing! 😀
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Consolidation 25 and PB for 5K !! 🥳
How to make a Strava link?
Strava notifications are driving me nuts!
