blog banner

blog banner

Monday, March 7, 2011

Race Preview: Achilles St. Patrick’s Day 5K Run/Walk

The Race

5k, downtown Toronto. Starts at Steam Whistle Brewery, ends with beer and chili - what's not to love?

A little pricey for a 5k at $40, but you get a T-shirt, beer and chilli. Did I mention beer?

Race web site

My Goal

I want a sub-20 5k this year. My current personal best is a 20:34 from last year... I'm close! Those last 34 seconds are tough to find.

This year I've been doing intervals every week, a tempo run, and a long run. The intervals have helped tremendously, I feel comfortable running 4:00/km now. But... I did a test run last week at the track to see if I could hold 4:00/km pace for 5k. I got to about 3.5k and couldn't hold it any longer. This pretty closely mimics my experience at my last 5k race:

1k - 3:56
2k - 4:03
3k - 4:04
4k - 4:24 ... and boom goes the dynamite!
5k - 4:05

... so I'm not quite sure I'm there just yet.

Still, I'm going to go for it, and I'll either do it or blow up trying. It's just a 5k, so I'll get another shot at it before the year is out if I need it.

Pacing

I've read too much about 5k pacing, it's making my head spin. A study said going "6% faster than even pace on the 1st mile" is the best strategy, based on some college runners... but they finish a 5k a lot faster than me, so not sure this applies! It also mirrors my strategy above that did not work out well at all...

So I plan to go out at target pace (3:59/km) and hold it until I either finish triumphantly in less than 20:00 or puke.

5 comments:

John C said...

Best of luck to you jonnyman -- I'll be rooting for you!

PS -- I ran this race a couple of years ago (did a 21:40) and learned that my garmin doesn't work in the area of tall buildings. Couple this with running at this pace takes alot of attention and the result is that I just ran as hard as I could and whatever happened happened. I don't know exactly what I did (ie the garmin data was useless) but here's the 2 things I did wrong:
1. Went out way too fast. Coming back, especially over the bridge -- I'm guessing i was running only about 4:30/km.
2. Seeded myself poorly at the start and had to do lots of weaving in the first kilometre. With a 20:00 goal, I should have started about 15 feet from the front of the line.

Again, best of luck to you jonnerooney.

Jon P said...

Awesome points... I forgot about the tall buildings thing, gack! I'll have to pace it the old fashioned way - kilometer markers and hitting the "lap" button.

I figured the seeding out from last year's race - sub-20 is top 60 of 1412 finishers!!! Man that's a lot of people for a 5k!

Robin said...

Great result though! Congrats

Sean said...

kick butt in the race! I have the same goal for this year but am not as close as you (only sub 21:00) right now, ug.

I think that the math with going out a bit harder and easing through it works for the elites, but I don't know about for me personally. I'm looking forward to see what works for you.

Ruben (ruben@triumphtriathlon.com) said...

Hi!

Nice blog you have here. FYI, I created a community of triathlete bloggers online called TriumphTriathlon.com. It's still in BETA phase right now but I'm trying to grow the community. You could also win free entry into the 140.6 of your choice! Please check out. Thanks for your help and keep up the good work on your blog!

Make it a great day,
Ruben