Ran my second 5km workout today, and the first one that I was able to successfully time -- 34 minutes and 23 seconds. (Thursday was my first 5km run, but I inadvertently hit the stopwatch during the run and so I didn't have a final time)
That said, today's run felt awful -- perhaps the worst since the excruciating days of Week One. Little things kept going wrong -- the stopwatch didn't start at first, so I went back to re-start ten seconds in; my shoelace came untied after about five minutes so I had to run carefully, lest I trip. Worst of all, though, my legs just felt like lead from the get-go. For most of the run, I felt like I wouldn't be able to make it, and I seriously considered stopping and chalking it up to failure. I have not failed a run yet, though, so I pressed on and -- amazingly enough -- made it to the end.
I'm not sure why today's run was so hard. My last run was two days ago, and that went fine. I ate breakfast, so I was nourished and hydrated, but I waited a couple of hours between running and eating so my digestive system wouldn't have a monopoly on system resources. Yes, it was cold, but I've run in the cold before -- like on Thursday -- without serious problems.
Even so, I did make it... and my time was not significantly slower than usual. 5km in 34' 23" is an average speed of 8.73 km/hour (or 6' 53" per kilometer). That's about my usual speed -- neither more nor less. (Yes, I know I need to get to the 5K+ podcasts to boost my speed past 10 km/hour ) It was tough, but for getting through the run, I'm going to chalk today up as a win!