Rob's Running Blog

5K Time Trial – Smashed the 24 minute barrier! PB!

First 5k time trial for a while, and have finally shattered the 24 minute barrier – 23:38! It’s been a long time coming, a PB by 22 seconds and 40 seconds than my previous best this year but definite improvement now after being stuck just over 24 for some time. Was definitely helped by more mileage last week then a 3 day rest, I think, so I felt fresh and raring to go.

By the end I was almost ready to collapse – felt very tempted to stop at 3k, thinking I had gone way too fast and couldn’t go any further, then I thought I might even break 23 minutes if I could just keep going and that gave me some motivation to keep going, but I was tiring in the last 2k and lost quite a bit of time just hanging on during kilometre 4, but still kept it below 5 mins/k and just sprinted as best I could in the last seconds, focusing on a lampost up ahead which I duly hugged/fell around as I finished!

Splits were:

4:34
4:44
4:38
4:54
4:46

This time I had the endurance to blast off and then just keep it thereabouts, so the training is working! The Macmillan race calculator now predicts 49:06 for 10k from this 5k time, and in recent times it has been pretty accurately predicting my 10k times from my 5k trials 🙂

I am now looking for sub 23 within the next few months – and who knows – sub 20 within a year?!