As a running novice, I had never heard of negative splits until I read a post 3 months ago from Stentrunner, who was deservedly chuffed about steadily increasing his pace throughout a 5 km run. Hmmm, that sounds interesting, I thought. It’s the opposite of what I do at parkruns. Normally I start out too fast, hang on as best I can and drag myself over the finish line. I did some research and found out that running negative splits would train me to finish strong and leave me feeling better at the end, so I thought I would give it a go.
Every time I tried in 2023, I failed. It’s so hard to run in a controlled manner! Two weeks ago nowster posted a very fine run report with negative splits. That was the inspiration I needed. I declared I was going to conquer negative splits this year. So I tried again at parkrun last weekend and I am hereby shouting from the rafters, “I DID IT!”. I was so proud when I saw that steady negative slope on my Pace Summary (see above right). The shape is so different from the uncontrolled peaks and troughs in pace when I ran on the same course in 2023 (above left). Wow!
My strategy was to start out at walking pace, just to make sure the first km was the slowest. I jogged gently for the next km, and jogged for the third km, by which time I noticed my stride was a little longer because I was relaxed and warmed up. This meant I would be going faster, even if my cadence stayed the same. Then I pushed the pace on the last two km and finished with a sprint at the end. Bingo!
Cheeky nearly negative splits! 😅🏃♀️
Negative splits 😃
Negative splits, yay 😁
Negative splits are HARD
