Diary Of A Road Runner

5k Tempo Run - Dull and Drizzly - 24m 59s PB!

Been taking it easy more or less since my hard 10k race on Sunday - had recovery run on Tuesday, so thought I’d get back to training with one of my 5k tempo runs, thought it would be interesting to see how my body responded to pushing the pace up a bit, and how my new Asics shoes responded as well! (They are a bargain neutral cushioned shoe I got from Sportshoes.com

Set off thinking I was going at pretty easy pace, but was just above 5 mins per k according to the Garmin; I felt Ok so got up to a comfortable but fastish (for me!) pace and kept going, only occasionally feeling the need to go into a recovery pace but resisting the temptation to slow down, and at times quickening up. Felt good even though according to Garmin I was well under 5m per k at times - had moments where I felt I was really flying, strides were long and quick, but at my level currently, to keep that up would be suicidal!

By the time got to my last finishing street with finishing lampost in sight (this is a regular route I run when doing tempo runs, to make sure my personal time trial isn’t affected by terrain, route, hills etc), thought I was going to crawl in over 26 minutes as usual, but gave it all I had, and noticed the Garmin said 24:30 with the finish in sight, so I sprinted (or ran clumsily fast at any rate!) and clocked the 5k up in 24:59.

I’ve finally broken the 25 mins - only just! But I feel there’s a lot more to come - the other week I was killing myself to do it in 26 minutes, and had stagnated at that kind of time for a while.

Average pace was easy to work out, at 5 minutes per k, but at times ran considerably faster - not a pace I could maintain for a long time, but can try to keep doing it for longer and build sustainable pace that way. So I know I can run at about 4 minutes per kilometre for short periods - maintaining that for 5k would mean a 20 minute 5k or a 40 minute 10k - am a long way off from that, perhaps impossibly so - but my goal of a sub 50 10k is at least in sight!!

Very pleased with this run and felt elated to beat the clock at last 24 minutes in sight now!