spaniel... Question for You! (Read 599 times)

I can look back in my log for you if you want specifics, but you'll have to be patient as I can't get to it until next week.... First, I will say that I don't that long run pace is the best place to gauge your fitness. What is easy? What is moderate? Long runs are a path to fitness but a poor measure. Also, in the longer stuff it becomes very individual. For example, looking at HR mine is whacky. My HR is typically lower that most people's at a given effort. However my max HR during a 5K is not much different than during a half marathon! For some reason I just can run HM/M at a higher % of max HR than most people. This makes me better at longer events but worse at shorter ones...I always regret that I never got a chance to maximize the marathon as my 10K predicted a disproportionately fast marathon. I think my easy pace during peak fitness for at 16-miler would have been in the 6:25-6:35 range. That was truly easy. I considered anything over 6:40 so easy that I rarely ran that slow back then (outside of morning recovery 4-6 milers), even though I was in the 90-110 mpw range every week. But I rarely did a long run all easy -- they are too good of a workout and no run much over 10 miles is true recovery. I typically did an interval workout Tuesday, med-long run with tempo on Thursday, a minor workout/refresher on Saturday, and a long run with quality on Sunday. 16 miles was my standard unless close to a marathon. I'd go out easy and usually accelerated after 10 miles to sub-6 pace, often running the last 4 miles under 5:30 pace and closer to 5 flat the last mile on a good day. Standard comparator workouts to gauge fitness would be a flat 4-mile tempo, 8X800m on the track in flats with 90sec jogging recovery, or 5X1600m repeats with 3min jogging recovery on the track in flats. The best I ever did the above workouts, all within a month of my 10K PR, were 5:13avg for the tempo, 2:22 avg for the 800s, and (I think?) 4:53 or 4:55 avg for the 1600s. If I forget you can bump this up next week and I can look up specifics, I have work travel and family stuff until then.

To clarify, the 2 miler was done at the track, and wasn't a race. Hopefully you'll have a great time with the family this weekend!

Yesterday I ran a self timed 5k in 16:22. I felt good through the start of mile 2 and then all of the sudden I just faded really fast and it took a lot of mental determination to keep going till the end. It's strange that I didn't hurt that bad, I was just breathing hard and had a general sense of discomfort and an overwhelming urge to stop running. If it was an actual 5k track race, based on the 16:22, I feel like the low 16s should be possible, but going into this run I thought I would break 16 minutes. I have a new respect for the distance now and now think that a sub 15:30 5k within 6 months is probably a gross overestimation of my ability. I have an actual 5k race coming up on October 18th, in Hunt Valley, MD. It should be interesting to see how I do. My training thus far has not prepared me very well for that additional mile.