At last ... another sub-30 min 5k :)

[runningnearbeirut]

Since the heady heights of running 10km in something like 58 minutes back in January, I've struggled a bit for a number of reasons. Maybe one has been motivation - nothing specific to aim for, although at least rfc's quests have helped get me off the couch (if not quite as regularly as I'd really like).

Anyway, I've been out 2 or 3 times most weeks, but with my hilly route and some warmer weather my 5km time had been slipping to around 35 minutes. Yes, not at all bad I know, but last year I did my one and only parkrun in 28:36 and had a storming slightly downhill/flat (OK, "cheating") personal best of 27:34 for 5km.

The other day I even did a W9 podcast, because I realised that I ran almost exactly 5km with Laura's encouragement last summer when I did these, and for some reason it takes me about 35 minutes to do 5km when I do the stamina podcast. That run was 5.04km in 31 minutes, so made me think that actually I'm not "that far" off.

So today, I headed down to the seafront for an early morning run. Almost ideal location - fresh sea air (well, hopefully I wasn't breathing in the polluted brown cloud that I can see hanging over the city from my house up a mountain!), flat run, lots of other people running/walking/fishing/swimming in the sea (OK, only men in the sea, but I did sea a woman fishing for the first time today!).

Anyway, I did it 5km in 28:20

I even almost managed the magical negative splits: 6:07, 5:37, 5:39, 5:32, 5:27 (what's 2 seconds between friends even if it messes up the pattern for the 2nd and 3rd splits?!)

[waletta Graduate]

Place & run sounds magical. (Not sure I understand negative splits though- ok quite sure I don't)

[runningnearbeirut Graduate in reply to waletta]

Thanks. It was pretty good

"Negative splits" means the time for each km gets lower as you go through the run - normally I set off too fast and get slower, but this time I started off relatively slowly and each km was faster than the one before (except the 2nd and 3rd which were the wrong way round but not by much).

[waletta Graduate in reply to runningnearbeirut]

Thanks for that. I can now say that tonight I went slower & slower 'til the 5th K which was slightly faster, so if it's possible to have one negative split, that's what I had. (Sounds painful on reflection).