Good advice for the 5k. You might even try to go a little bit slower than pace for the first mile. You haven't done a lot of 5k pace stuff so it might be hard to feel where your pace is and you will probably have an adrenaline rush at the start. If you can out-sprint almost anyone at the end, it probably means you could have run faster in the middle of the race.

I'm going to predict 19:47 and you feeling like you could have gone faster. GL

fwiw...

i generally go out pretty fast and then adjust around the 1 to 1.5 mile mark. a typical race for me is like 6:00 to 6:15 first mile then see where i am and how i feel, and go from there. if i have some one to run with i do better, but in most of these smaller 5ks that i run, there isn't hardly any more passing past the first mile or so. many times i find myself in no-mans land...ahead of the main group but not fast enough to catch up with the leaders. once you lose contact with someone (40 or 50 yards) it is going to be hard to make up unless they really start going backwards. my worst races were when i tried doing the negative split thing.

my usual splits end up being something like:
6:10
6:30
6:30
then 35 to 45 sec last tenth

I don't think going out at faster than race pace is a good idea at all. Your risk of running slower in the second half of the race dramatically increases when you do this, even if you are good at hanging on. Last I knew, there was a lot of evidence out there that negative splits (second half slightly faster than the first) was a much more effective way of racing. The odds are that you will feel a lot better this way with a mile to go than you would if you went out too fast. This doesn't mean that you will have energy left in the tank if you run the last half of the race correctly, but it does mean that you will be passing people, and that is always reassuring.

SC - really enjoying the log and the comments from other posters, particularly from Empire Man who can now school me in both marathon training and Survivor threads. I'm considering doing a similar log here for an Olympic distance tri on Memorial Day 2013 where my goal is to win my age group. Hopefully I can get equally good advice here.

A question on your 5K this weekend: You want to break 20 minutes which means a 6:27 pace. Given you haven't run any mile faster than about 7:30 in your training over the last six weeks, do you think you'll have the speed to pull this off? I find that when I train longer, slower at anything (swimming, biking or running) I have a real hard time cranking it back up without putting some speed work back into the workouts first.

Just curious what you and the other posters here think. Is your sub-20 goal even reasonable given your last six weeks of training?

yep it's a little weird, but SC is a weird case:

--he's totally new at longer stuff so those times are going to lag behind

--the only training he's done for longer stuff so far has been a handful of long runs and one actual tempo run. And his half time from last week is misleading because: heat + no other racers + unfamiliarity w/distance = imo he could have run that maybe five minutes faster if something important was at stake, like say being on time to a beer festival

and if he had run that fast, then we could expect like a ~22 minute 5K. But sub20 is still in play because

--he's comfy with 5Ks, he knows what he's doing, e.g. he already ran a 22something at the beginning of this training cycle

--and he's run them before at sub 5:30 pace, so we know he's got wheels and a natural knack for the distance

Cliffs: It would probably take like a year for SC's endurance system to start really catching up to his VO2 system. But I still think sub20 is going to be tough, and a sub21 (6:45 pace) would be pretty sweet. After all he has a lot of obstacles: his ideal pre-race meal is a Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, his best posts itt are all about pasta, and we've established that if any hot girls pass him in the first mile he's willing to do a 5:15 split on the off-chance that they make him their running partner for long trots through the friendzone.

looooool good stuff

RE: dedmau's question, I did run either a 6:04 or a 6:23 mile fairly casually (depending on whether you believe my hand timer or my GPS... and in some pretty hot weather too) by myself the other week just to see what 85% effort felt like. So I have the speed to go faster. I think with motivation and other people in the race (pacers) I could probably run a 5:45 mile right now.

I agree that sub 20 this Sunday will be hard but it's within the rage of possibility.

Yeah, I missed that earlier. Good luck - an adult PR sounds like a no brainer.

5k trip report





Time:



Ok, so this was a little weird. I figured that this would be one of the more competitive 5ks in the series since it's getting closer to XC pre-season and the race was at a local high school. I would have bet money that I'd see at least a handful of kids from the local teams show up to get in a race-like workout.

Well, there were a couple dudes wearing XC shirts but they must have been freshmen or sophomores because they weren't very fast.

So I started the race at what I thought was a pretty reasonable or even kinda slow pace and I found myself quickly in third place. I kept thinking about Empire Man's warning not to go out to fast so I didn't try to move up to 2nd or even catch the lead guy, which I totally could have done. I figured some people would catch me but for the first 1/3 of the race or so nobody was there.

On the 2nd lap I was briefly passed by two guys but by that point I realized that I probably had a good shot at top 3 so I didn't let them get ahead for long, and in fact passed them back about 2/3 of the way through the lap, and then passed the #2 guy so I was behind the leader (who was far, far ahead by that point).

It started to get kinda challenging on the third lap, and one of the two guys that had originally passed me on lap 2 caught up to me again and passed me with about 600 meters to go. The course ended with about 200m on a track and he was probably 3-4 seconds ahead by the time we reached it. I made sure nobody was going to catch me but I wasn't able to make up the distance.

So when I crossed the line I asked the guy if I was third. He said "third overall, but 2nd officially." Apparently the first place guy didn't have a bib. I was happy to get top 3 even though the time wasn't as good as I was hoping. But then when they announced the age group winners and handed out medals, it turned out the 2nd place guy (overall) had been in the youth bracket (he was 17). So they gave him the 1st place medal for his age and I got the 1st overall. loooool

So... new adult PR, not as fast as I hoped, but I definitely held back a little bit for the first 2 miles or so. I've got one more 5k before the marathon coming up in September. I may skip it if I can't work it into my schedule easily though.

Congrats on the PR and the medal. Hardware is always good.

What were your splits? Doesn't look like you had more than one sub-7 min mile. Did you have trouble dialing up the speed? How did it feel?

The splits are somewhat impossible to figure out. We never ran past the timer and the course didn't have symmetrical loops anyway (we did 2 laps on a track before circling the park 3 times, then back on the track for 200m). I had my GPS (it gave me 21:28 for 5k FWIW), but I included my warmup in the total run for the day so the first mile is kinda hard to pinpoint and the splits are all off.

But if I had to guess I would think that the pace was pretty consistent.

The first two loops around the park weren't that hard and I felt like I could have gone faster. On the third lap I was a little nervous about making sure I stayed in the top 3. So it's hard to say whether it was fatigue or anxiety that made that lap more challenging. But by the end I definitely felt like I'd put in a solid effort.

I just found out yesterday that the unofficial first place guy ran 19:30. I'm almost positive I could have stuck with him (or, 2 seconds behind him) the whole way. Although... who knows. He was only 5-8 seconds ahead for the first half of the race or so... he must have picked up his pace considerably.

Oh yeah... it's looking like that 17-miler may not be in the cards this week. Yesterday would have been impossible -- today is shaping up about the same.

I'm thinking I can squeeze in 8-10 miles at lunch today, then do 5, 8, 5, rest, 8, and then only do 17 instead of 18 this coming Sunday. I'm sure it's not ideal, but it's probably the best I can manage this week. I've got some interesting non-running stuff going on that I can't really post about right now.

Ended up with a little more time than I expected yesterday so I went out to do a 14-mile loop. Unfortunately it was hotter than the surface of the sun out there so I decided it would be smart to cut the run a little short to avoid literally dying. Wound up getting 11 miles in at a 9:30 pace.

I think I'll do 4-5 miles today, 8 Thursday, rest Friday, 8 Saturday and 17 Sunday.

Sounds pretty good, and hey at least you'll be back on schedule with the right days of the week.

But when you do show up for the longer long runs--meaning this 17 miler and the two or three others you have left--then take them as seriously as you took the 5K race. Long runs and tempo runs are the two best ways to get marathon goals, they're your two most important workouts by far...and so far you've been a little light on both. Nothing serious and there's still plenty of time to get there, but yeah, a little light.

Obv this isn't the same thing if you were training for shorter stuff like KRM, and if all you cared about right now was landing your 2012 sub20 5K, then your most important workouts would be VO2 stuff and tempos, followed by long runs and pure speedwork stuff (those last two in either order, depending on where you were in your schedule).

There's a school of thought on this board that believes training at faster than tempo pace is bad for you, but to me that advice is, like, emphatically odd. Regular VO2 workouts are a super standard feature of every non-noob running plan ever. From JV twerps to all the olympians we just watched, VO2 workouts are an absolute linchipin of their programs. Even Higdon (who is famous/notorious for catering to low expectations) uses them in all of his "advanced" marathon workouts. If anyone (or anyone's gimmick accounts) are frowning at this right now and mentally composing their rebuttals, which historically have been eight words long, vague, and based completely on personal anecdotes about what you ran on your summer vacation, then let me first say that I agree with you when we're talking about people who are new to running, or people who are way overweight or way out-of-shape, or even for casual folks whose goals are mostly stuff like "breaking five hours," or "finishing," or even "starting." I agree that these guys don't have to be doing VO2 workouts to get what they want. But for everyone else, which is an enormous group that easily includes SC and KRM, and also includes virtually everyone else I've ever seen with a running log on 2p2, VO2 workouts (done right) will unequivocally improve their fitness and their race times. The end.

You (SC) aren't doing regular VO2 workouts now because you're coming into this marathon after a long time away from regular running, and because for your current schedule and goals, long runs and tempo runs are plenty. Which is totally cool, and you're doing great. (That said, I still think sometime in the last three weeks of this you should try one Yasso 800 workout [or something], partly because you'll like it, but mostly because it will be a really good data point if you ever decide to take a shot at a future marathon.)

OK, when the brackets within parenthesis make an appearance then it's time to end the post, but one more time for clarity: the key workouts for marathons are long runs and tempo runs. Pure speedwork and VO2 workouts (like your 5K race, which was really just a type of VO2 workout) are helpful, but they aren't as important as the three really long runs you have left, or the 5-6 tempo runs.

Well, this past weekend was the first long run that I "missed." I also sometimes can't resist throwing surges into my regular mid-week runs -- kinda fartlek style, so shorter than 20 minutes of tempo, for example -- but definitely at a faster pace.

They posted a video of this most recent 5k on youtube. Man, I look slow even when I'm running at a 7:00 pace.

[gwh] it's not your fault [/gwh] that you've been a little light in the tempos and long runs, man you've been showing up every day and doing a good job. But again, you're a weird case, a naturally speedy guy who likes to run fast and has some moxie, but who didn't have a base and not much experience with running really far and was trying to drop some weight too.

There isn't a ton of tempo work in Higdon to begin with, and then your first tempo runs were totally on the slow side. And there aren't very many longer long runs in Higdon either (mostly bc that's just how it goes in an eighteen-week program that starts with an 8-mile long run), but then you dropped one of the four longest. That's all I meant by a little light.

But I think you're still in a really nice spot. The 5K was good for your sanity, your mood and work ethic have always been great, and I think that you're now a low risk of overtraining, which was always the most likely way that this was going to go haywire. As long as you keep showing up and putting in the daily work, and going into each your harder workouts with a plan and a steely gaze, and obv keep stretching and rollering your legs and getting enough rest while limiting yourself to 45 drinks/week like some mormon sorcerer, then I like your chances in October. And I also like them for getting your sub20 5k. What's your 2012 beer mile time?

Man, I'd love go to sub 10. I think I can probably do four 90-second laps (spaced out, of course) even with all that beer in my belly, so that gives me 4 minutes to drink the beer. But that's the hard part... I'm a slow beer drinker to begin with, and of course trying to chug when I'm out of breath is just 1000x harder. The key will be how I recover from those 90 second laps. I think I'll only need 10-15 seconds to recover and start drinking, as opposed to like a whole minute the last time I tried.

I don't have a beer mile on the schedule yet, but I'm looking at mid November as a possibility.

Heh. I'm still tracking my diet. I haven't worried too much about changing anything... just a little bit of portion control... but I have lost some weight for sure.

Yesterday morning I was 169.8. This morning 170.0. The days prior like 171.8-ish. I have a nice graph developing that I will post soon. So I'm down 6-7 pounds in the past 5-6 weeks or so.

Well if you can't chug four beers in an average of one minute each then you've got deep-seated motivation problems that probably trace back to poor self-esteem. Try drinking them upside down through your vulva and see if that helps!

Can I get a link to the video? Congrats on the medal and awesome time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-im...layer_embedded

I think our hero is in bib 697, mostly because at 2:50 he's the only adult with enough sense to take the medal and put it around his own neck instead of awkwardly bowing his head while Stoned Race Volunteer Guy does it for him.

ding ding ding

I might have missed this, but when are you planning on running your marathon?

Also, I had to look up what Yasso 800s were as I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to marathon training. They look like a good workout, actually, especially once you up the number of them to prep for a marathon. I'm probably going to be running a marathon next year at some point, assuming I can lose more weight, and I will probably incorporate these into my training. Let me know if you try this workout and what you thought about it. I imagine that they really don't have much benefit in terms of marathon training if you are only doing 4 or 5, but once you get up to 10 or more, I bet they really have a good impact.

The marathon is October 7th. Yes, the Yasso 800 workout sounds pretty good and I'll try to work one in at some point.

Good luck, again. I will be rooting for you.

Also, I looked at your book on Amazon, I put it on my wish list. I am a writer too, actually. I write mostly financial stuff, which is extremely uninteresting compared to what you do.

I enjoyed the video. You don't look slow you look relaxed/efficient. Do you hold the phone the whole time? I got an arm strap and can't imagine holding it during a run let alone a race.