Bursting a gasket with Garmin Pace Pro!

[Fionamags]

Courtesy of one of you fine people last week, I was alerted to the pacing strategy bit of the Garmin app and I decided that, armed with this on my watch, I was going to crack a marvellous new 5K time.

The feature really is brilliant for fiddling about with split times and I got it down to what I thought looked like feasible (albeit challenging) negative splits. I had been doing really well with intervals etc so puffed up with over confidence, I decided that the thing to do was to take 40 seconds off my 5K time to get me to 41 mins.

Off I set, music on, confidence high and feet slapping smartly on the cycle path. Slooooooow down, I told myself as I checked the watch and saw that I was ahead of target. It wasn't long before I was back on track though and only slightly ahead of the target pace. 1K down and all was good.

Next kilometre there was a 15 sec jump in pace and that's when the puffing kicked off in earnest. Totally do-able, I told myself and kept chugging along.

Kilometre 3 and the sweat was lashing off me. But I hung in there bravely, slugging it out to stick with the pace.

Kilometre 4 was messy - very messy - and try as I might, the pace was far too rich. Finished that one with time to make up to reach target.

Final kilometre! I can't report much about this save to say that it went by in a haze of pure ghastliness. Sweat flying, puffing like a train, letting out the odd groan/shout of frustration and feet pounding away..... I knew that the 41 mins was not going to happen but thought all this agony would certainly get me somewhere close. (I couldn't really see much of my watch by this point as my glasses had steamed up and I had to take them off.)

Finished up, walked and stretched and threw myself into the car to sit and check my latest triumph via the stats on my phone. After all that? I improved by 3 seconds. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The moral of the tale is to take it down a notch with expectations. And stick with a very slow first split!!!!

[VS1975 Graduate10]

Well done for trying, that’s the main thing & 3 seconds off is a win 😊 x

[RollingPea]

Glad that you are notching up this PB with a laugh. I gather you were running alone? It's just so difficult to do a hard run alone! You did well to keep pushing to the end. Hurrah! I am finding that my fastest runs happen spontaneously, when there are no plans and no expectations except to take part in a group event, such as a parkrun or fun run. Group events mean there will be someone in front, who I can try to keep up with if I feel like running hard that day. For me, any whiff of imposed or self-imposed pressure causes my shoulders and chest to tighten up and puffing and gasping ensues. Well done on your interval training. I bet it will reward you out of the blue one day soon.

[Fionamags Graduate10 in reply to RollingPea]

Yes I usually run alone. I should have learned my lesson by now with starting pace - the slower the start - the faster the finish!

[Cmoi Graduate10]

You gave it a go!

I've no idea about Garmin Pace Pro, as I don't run by pace, but maybe have a look at this chart when you're next working out your target paces: depicus.com/swim-bike-run/p...

If your original 5k time was 41mins 40 secs, then your starting pace was 8:20. Taking that to 8:05 and sustaining it for the next 4km, even without any further increases, would give you an overall 5k time of 40 mins 40 secs, i.e. 20 seconds faster than your target.

So it seems to me that you don't need to increase your pace nearly as much as you thought.

[Fionamags Graduate10 in reply to Cmoi]

40 seconds doesn't sound like much, does it??? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 The trouble was that with the negative splits that I had, I was supposed to do the final kilometre at 7 something. By then I was knackered..... I'll take a look at your link.

[Cmoi Graduate10 in reply to Fionamags]

Now I'm no mathematician, so I look at it like this: if you want your 5k to take 41 minutes, you can afford to run every kilometre at an 8- something pace, because 5 x 8 = 40. The something is crucial though, because it needs to add up to sixty seconds. So I calculate you could in theory do 8:20, 8:15, 8:10, 8.08, 8.07 and get 41 minutes with negative splits.

To give yourself a bit of leeway you could set fractionally faster paces, but you don't need to be pushing yourself so much you end up exhausted!

Also, much depends on your route. If it's flat throughout, or ends on a downhill, OK, but if you start running downhill and end running uphill, aiming for negative splits may well be pointless. I speak as someone whose final kilometre usually involves at least 30m elevation gain.

Happy working it all out!

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate10]

That sounds like a brilliant horrible run that’s wonderful when it’s over! I haven’t come across the pacing pro function-I think I need to do some investigating.

Great run. Those three seconds were hard fought and I hope you celebrated!

[Fionamags Graduate10 in reply to MissUnderstanding]

I was horrified actually. If I had just run my usual splits then gone all out for the last K I would have done better than that. It's all learning though, isn't it?

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate10 in reply to Fionamags]

You’re so right about that! ❤️