Thursday, February 11, 2010

Recovery week--and a chance for a 5K PR

This week I've been enjoying a recovery week. Less mileage and more of them easy miles. And no speedwork tomorrow morning. In fact, the only run for the whole week that wasn't easy was the 5 x 1,000m I did with the group on Monday night. I'm still sticking with lifting all three times this week, but cutting down on reps and weight. It's not all that much less overall, but I feel very fresh. Once I finish this week, I will have four weeks of Boston training under my belt. Crazy! Only a little more than two months to go.

I have been ogling the Boston gear on the adidas website. In particular, the jacket. The Boston jacket is iconic and I have been wanting one for years. I'm biding my time for now in case they come out with more choices, but I'll probably buy the jacket in about a month's time. But I'll be too superstitious to actually wear it until I cross the line in Boston. I just want to have it ready. :)

Coming up this weekend is a 5K tune-up race, the 500 Festival Training Series 5K. It's the first of a series (5K, 10K, and 15K) to help beginning runners training for the Indy Mini get ready and learn how to race. For more experienced runners, they make useful tune-up races--no-frills, certified courses, flat, etc. And they're relatively cheap.

I have been an extremely inconsistent 5K runner. For years after college, I assumed I would never really PR in the 5K again, since I had raced it so much in college meets. The standards of 21:10 over 5K and 20:52 for 5,000m (indoors) would not be easy to surpass without a lot of focused training, I figured. For a long time, this was true. I ran a string of 23:30ish races, and just could not really get below that. It was amazing to me that in college I considered any time over 22:30 a failure, but here I couldn't even break 23. In fact, at the training series 5K in 2007, the last time I ran it, it was frigid the morning of the race and I just had a horrible day, coming it at 26:39. That was discouraging!

Then in 2008, I suddenly busted out a 21:07. I have my suspicions about the accuracy of the course, and I haven't come close since. In fact, I couldn't even dip below 22 in 2009 (although I only raced three, and none were at ideal fitness). But now, I have been putting in some really solid speedwork, I'm in good condition, and I'm coming off a recovery week. The forecast calls for a low of 23, high of 30 that day and partly sunny (that is going to feel very mild compared to what we've been having). The roads should be dry by then. So...everything may be coming together for...duhn duhn duuuuuhn! a 5K PR. I'm hopeful.

So what is my current PR? I am not sure. I think my best road 5K was around 21:40 or 50 before the 21:07. My best cross country 5K was 21:10. My best 5,000m on the track was 20:52. Now, a road 5K is nothing like a track 5,000m, but...not gonna lie, I would really like to just say ONE number for my 5K PR with no asterisks. I don't know if that's feasible yet, but man that would be AWESOME.

5 comments:

DogPound said...

I'm with you, I totally struggle with the 5k. It's a really hard distance for me. The only time I like it is when it's XC.

L.A. Runner said...

Yeah, +1 to Doglb. 5Ks are crap when you are training for marathons. My strategy- go out hard and try to hold on. Haha. Good luck, dear!

Susan said...

I too am holding out for better Boston great...I hope they come out with a jacket that is not black!

Elizabeth said...

Wow-- I have a recovery week as well, and also a 5K planned for Sunday. Only the 5K got snowed out. :-( I think your blog perfectly captures how tough a 5K can be to nail down. Every second counts, the pacing is critical. Best of luck to you!!!

TiredMamaRunning said...

5K's are tough-even if you do them a lot. There's just no time to fix things if you get off to a bad start (either too fast OR too slow).

I'm also waiting on the Boston jacket-probably until after the marathon since I've heard Running Warehouse has Boston things on the cheap after the fact.