After my 10k run last Thursday I knew I was in decent shape. With a 4 day break of no running over Easter, I did a treadmill interval session on Tuesday morning and then turned my mind to today - what to run?
Sod it, I'll go for the concerted 5k PB effort that I was going to do "in a few weeks". The body felt good, the weather was great - blue skies, no wind, 11C - no time like the present, what are you waiting for?
I'd done a 5k split of 23:11 during my 10k last week so I was expecting to go well today and sub-23, close to 22:30 hopefully. How would this go? Could I get over my consistently slow 4th kilometre?
Off I went. I was breathing hard but steady at 1km and going OK at 2. But midway came and the legs suddenly felt heavy - oh no. And they continued to feel like tree trunks until about 3.75k. Throughout though, cardiovascular was fine, no issue. But I felt slow and thought "I'll take 22:45!". Then around the 4k mark, legs felt great and I was able accelerate and it was wonderful.
With 200m to go I looked at my watch... Bloody hell! Much faster than thought so I put in a final spurt and finished strong.
22:30??
Nah... 22:16
A whole 1m:15s off my previous best.
But kilometre 4... Why do you kill me so?? (See graph - it gets me every time!)
Thanks for listening !
John