Saturday, May 26, 2012

5K PR

Wow, that was easy.

The Weston Memorial Day 5K is my home-town race, and the first running race I ever did. It was also the fastest race I'd ever run, after all, I was running from a man with a knife.

Since then, I've had faster runs, but have never put up a faster pace in a race than that one. When I collected all my races on Athlinks recently, I was shocked to see how little improvement I've had running. Part of that was from not repeating races, but another part was, I think, that I just wasn't training correctly.

Over the last year, I've taken up the Maffetone style of training. I've seen a great improvement, I think.

So here are my prior races:

Weston 5K
TimePaceYear
23:147:282008
23:527:402009
23:177:292010


I didn't run the race in 2011. And here's today's race:

Weston 5K, 2012
TimePace
22:137:10


And for reference, here's the table from my Maffetone Method Update post, showing my improvement over the past many months:

Paine to Pain Tempo
Mile Pace HR Pace HR
1 8:08.2 170 8:57.9 183
2 9:23.2 181 9:51.3 166
3 8:53.9 182 7:52.6 168
4 9:49.4 178 9:21.2 163
5 8:35.6 179 8:05.9 166


Here are the splits and HRs from today's race (I'm using the times from my Garmin Forerunner 310XT, which, as always, are off the official times):

Weston 5K, 2012 Splits
MilePaceHR
16:48177
27:00185
37:34186
0.126:46191
3.127:07183


What blew my mind about this race was how easy it felt. I was pooped at the end, as you should be, but not nearly as bad as in some other races I've run, where I didn't go nearly as fast. And after a few minutes and a couple sips of water I was planning a long run for tomorrow morning with a friend. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that 1. The Maffetone Method is working for me, and 2. I could go a lot faster if I keep this up. Which I will.

The key thing is that my training for this race has been between erratic and nonexistent. The only consistent running I've done since I pulled my calf last fall was in the last week. While I wanted to PR, I didn't really expect to, because my training's been all over the place. I'm very happy.

I'd also like to note the amazing timing system this race uses. I got back from the race and checked my email, and discovered this:



Yes, that's right. They sent the results to my Gmail account 4 hours before the race finished! That is incredible. I guess I'm lucky I didn't check my email before the race, or I might not have even bothered to run it!

Oh, and I wore my Speeds, which are still my all-time favorite all-purpose running shoe. Pre-race nutrition was, as always, a cup of coffee with cream. Post-race nutrition was unnecessary. Calves feel slightly worked post-race, but over all my legs feel great.

P.S. Updated the post with the rest of my times for the Weston 5K.

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