5.26.09

Today I signed up for the tweet5k just for fun. I saw it a few days ago on twitter but wasn't sure if I was going to do or not, but for ten bucks and a good cause there's really no downside. There were some crazy times posted by the elites around the country, it's hard to comprehend just how fit these people really are, a lot of hard work I suppose. Anyway I decided to do a time trial sort of deal today at the track, because you get a few chances to post a time, and I wanted to take a little stab at it now so I can do another at the end of the week. My goal was 17:45, but that soon fell apart.

When I got to the track it was windy, and there were storm clouds around, and it was warm. Not really the greatest combo, but it wasn't raining or thundering so I just went ahead with the "time trial". I guess that's the best word for it. I'm also considering it speedwork, but in this workout I get zero rest, so I suppose that qualifies as a time trial. I had to run with my stopwatch which wasn't too big of deal, it just makes it harder to pump the arms. I tried to keep split times as well for better feedback on the run. Normally I'll just keep miles, but since I knew I had to run like 84's I thought it would be nice to compare later on. So I warm up for a good 15-20 minutes.

I wasn't expecting a lot today, my legs just started feeling better yesterday and I just had a race Saturday so I definitely wasn't going all out on this. It's weird sometimes running by yourself, or against yourself. There is definitely something odd about it that I can't quite put my finger on, something a little unnatural, lol. Whatever the case I clicked the buttons and was off. I had my stopwatch in my right hand, along with heart rate monitor watch, and my working ipod going as well. The first lap I missed, I was too busy trying to look at the split, I think it was 1:24, but I could be wrong. I got the rest of the splits except for the final 400 because I was just running.

I started off well, but slightly too fast for the first mile. It was slow and painful from there. I made it halfway and was already breathing hard, and pushing to stay on pace. Looking through the splits they were on pace through 2000 meters, then slowly degraded. I was hoping for a relaxing run, "just hit the splits" kind of deal, but got no such luck. Each lap was harder than the previous and I was breathing heavy and the legs were definitely still a little tired from Saturday's hard effort. I wanted to quit at 2 miles, 3200 meters, but I just kept pushing on. I needed to at least post a time, even if it slow, I thought. That kept me going, but the wind was going pretty good too and that really made the homestretch harder each time around.

Definitely much tougher than I would have liked on this. Breathing was erratic at times and it was hard to relax. I kept having to push to keep the pace up, even though my body wanted to rest. Somehow I maintained relatively close to goal pace, but definitely not in good enough shape to run it easily. I kicked the last 200 meters after reaching 4800 meters, but it wasn't quite enough to break 18. I hate to say it but now I'm almost dreading doing it again, that was much more difficult than I had anticipated, but I guess thats what running is sometimes, or a lot of times.

Splits
1:22?
2:47.66 1:26?
4:13.76 1:26.10
1600- 5:39.97 1:26.21
7:07.12 1:27.15
8:34.72 1:27.60
10:02.88 1:28.16
3200- 11:31.12 1:28.24
13:00 1:28.88
14:28.53 1:28.53
15:57.97 1:29.44
4800- 17:28?? -1:30?
18:05 - :37?

Just after the run, not even walking a full lap, it started raining. The rain felt great! It was like I was being rewarded after a hard run. The only bad thing was that it was really coming down and I didn't want to ruin any of my stuff or get my shoes waterlogged, so I had to leave. I didn't get to run any cooldown miles. I reached a new HR max today of 195, I've hit 191 before, but topped it today - not completely sure if that is a good thing. The nice part about today was having splits. I've never ran (raced) a 5k on a track before so it was interesting to see the technical details of how I fell apart :P

4:45pm. track. 84° 56%H 8 mph from SSW

18:05(3.21) fasttwitch 88
AHR 175 MHR 195