New 5K PR such that it is

On Sunday I ran the 5K race at Lake Merritt.

For me it was a new PR although I had hoped to break 26 minutes. As it was I had to settle for 26:11 ('gun time') or so, although my GPS recorded a 5K split of just under 26 minutes so that's good enough for me to use 26:00-26:05 as the basis of the half marathon I plan to run in the Fall and also for a speed work class I'm taking in June.

Obviously this isn't an especially fast 5K time, but since it was 33 seconds faster than the same time last year (my last 5K) and 4 minutes faster than 2 years ago, I think it's at least headed in the right direction. It will be interesting to see if there's much change after the speed work class as up to this point we've done almost nothing to try and increase speed, only long run endurance.

This months field was weakened by the Tilden Tough Ten the previous weekend, with many of the regular fast runners sitting this one out. Amazingly I actually placed 3rd in my age group (30-39 Male), and came in 16th out of 71 overall. Easily my best Lake Merritt placing. Unfortunately I didn't stay around for the awards.



Here's the pace/HR vs distance graph. At this point my my AT is just over 192 bpm and equates to around an 8:25 min/mile pace. Above this HR my running quickly goes anaerobic. I was feeling pretty good holding a little below this level through the 2nd mile. Interestingly at this point a couple of (small) hills and some pace fluctuations (it wasn't a closed course), didn't really alter my HR by more than a few bpm. Into the 3rd mile I decided to push the pace as best I could and see if I exploded. That didn't happen, and I did manage to keep it together. My fastest mile was the last one.