Hi all!
After many months of frustration and then hard work I am back at my best 5km form. My PB is 21:45 and today I was only 2 seconds slower.
I have run 22:14 in the last 2 weeks at Parkrun and have been happy with that time. Today my aim was about 22 mins. At the beginning I knew a guy who is at a similar pace to me was aiming for 21:30 and was being paced for that by his brother who normally runs 5kms in about 18 minutes. They asked me if I wanted to run with them but that seemed top fast for me. I decided I was going to run the first km in about 4:15 and take it from there.
I completed the first km in 4:18 which was similar to last week. At the 1 mile mark I was at 6:54 which was about 5 seconds faster than last week. At 2.5km I was at 10:55 which was still only 5 seconds faster than last week. The whole way along I kept the 2 brothers in my sight and picked off a few people along the way. At the 3 km mark I could see that I was closing in so I kept the pace up as I was tiring. At 4 km I was closer still was far enough behind that I didn't expect to catch up. We have a bend which leaves two straights and 550 to the finish which I use as a mark to speed up. I reached that mark about 5 seconds after the brothers and thought I had a chance of catching up but my body was really aching. I speed up and so did they I was a bit closer as we got to the finishing straight. So 200m left and a quick glance at my watch showed 20:55 gone. I normally take 1 min on the straight so u was confident of a sub 22 min run. I then went for it and caught up with the brothers with about 100m left. He sped up so I went full out and pipped him at the finish.
We both collapsed at the end and when I got my breath back I saw my time. I was amazed! It shows what a bit of friendly competition can do. My final km was my fastest and I have never done that before. I thanked the guys for pulling me along because there is no way I could have done it without using them as a target.
I still feel like there is a lot more I can do at 5km if I keep the training up, so hopefully the PB will come soon. I think today's run is better than my PB run because the pace was much more steady and the finish was strong.
Here is a link to today's run and happy running all!connect.garmin.com/activity...
xxx
