Rob's Running Blog

A Flying 5k Season’s Best – 27:20

Had an odd afternoon and did some bits of decorating (mainly trying to get a bit more of border off the room I am converting in a therapy room and trying out my new paint!), and needed a run to clear the cobwebs away, but not having eaten properly earlier decided a fast 5k would be the best option rather than a medium to long run.

One of my left toes was a bit painful so trimmed he nail, then got out into the cool evening air. Set off at a brisk pace, wary of going too fast but not wanting to go too slowly either, and felt fine, with the first km ticking over in 5:37, which is pretty fast for me these days, and I just aimed to keep that going, figuring if I ran around 5:30 per km I could come in at around 27:30, although not having done a fast 5k for a bit, couldn’t remember what my season’s best actually was at that point.

Second km ticked over in 5:33 and I was on target, though just slightly starting to wonder if I could maintain that kind of pace for another 3k. While my intention was just to maintain pace, when I felt good I just seemed to quicken up, and this was revealed in the splits, as the next kms were 5:30 and then 5:19. By the last lap I was starting to struggle just a little and really breathing very hard, and was really glad to peter out to a well deserved stop, clocking 5:17 for the last km and 27:20 for the 5k, which is a season’s best by some margin. I checked through the Garmin history to see if it was a season’s best and came across a 26:33 5k in February, which puzzled me until I realised that had been an intervals session and I had been running those 1k intervals pretty flat out, so to be under a minute away from that on a continuous run seems a good sign of progress!

So all in all a good, fast hard run which left me breathless and shows my running is starting to get closer to where it was a couple of years ago!