Start time: 04/17/05, 8:00am
Location: Hains Point
Distance: 10 kilometers
Finishing time: 1:00:21
Average pace: 9:44min/mile
It was just Pam and me for the Sallie Mae 10K this morning; we stuck together for the first two miles, as my legs started to loosen up and I just enjoyed the fresh air and the sun beating down and shining off of the Potomac River. After two 10:30min/miles, I picked up the pace a bit; I knew that my previous best for a 10K was at a 9:50min/mile pace, so all I could think in the back of my head was that I’d ended up “80 seconds behind”. That doesn’t sound like much but when the entire course is only 6.2 miles long and you’re already 2 miles in, that’s a lot for me. I’d been doing a 4:1 run:walk ratio and I kept it up for miles 3 and 4, where I started to shave off a little bit of time; after mile 3 it was down to 70 seconds behind, and after mile 4 just 50 seconds behind.
I took one final walk break about halfway through mile 5 and then it was running all the rest of it in; when I hit mile marker 5 I was “behind” by just 20 seconds. I knew that if I kept up the pace I was on I was pretty well set to beat my old PR. As I hit the final marker with two-tenths of a mile to go, I glanced at my watch… tons of time to spare, thank goodness. I was now ahead of schedule by about 30 seconds. I got one final boost when about 250 feet from the finish line someone started sprinting past me, and I wasn’t ready to let this stranger win; I picked up the pace myself and ended up racing him across the finish line. (I won, ha ha.) The final result, 1:00:21, knocked 39 seconds off of the previous PR.
I have one more 10K scheduled (the Capitol Hill Classic 10K) on May 22nd. I think if I drop the walk breaks after the first mile or two I can knock off some more of those remaining pesky 22 seconds; it’d be nice to get a sub-hour finishing time one of these days. Until then, I’m happy with today’s victory. (Pam did really well too, coming in about ten minutes later. No PR for her, unfortunately, but I know she will next time. Things just didn’t seem to be aligning for her today.)
Hmmm, so I need to get the RSS feed for this blog too.
Do you run any Speed Intervals during your training workouts? Given how much you have improved over the last 6-8 weeks, you might not have to cut out all those walk breaks yet. As with any training, if you want to run faster and have a faster time, you have to train faster.
If you concentrated on interval training once a week (and ONLY once a week and 10% of your total mileage). I think that you could keep your walk breaks up to mile 3 (halfway). This way it would not be a drastic change for your running style of the past 4-5 years.
After doing some quick calculations of your last race time and your text above, you did the last 1.2 miles around a 8:58 pace. And the sprint at the finish line was even faster…
How did your knees feel on Sunday? That would be one indicator on how fast to set your speedwork.
I’ve been slowly picking up my solo running speed–trying to regularly run 9:30min/miles for my solos, which is dropping about a minute per mile, although being sick last month derailed that for a bit–but I haven’t started interval training yet. AIDS Marathon does offer it and this year I plan on taking them up on the program. But yeah, I’ve been pushing myself and slowly amping up the speed at good levels.
(I really need to find a high school in the area that lets people use their track on the weekends.)
Knees felt just fine on Sunday to boot. Yay!
The track is much better than a treadmill when it comes to interval training. I think you will be pleasantly satisfied with the results that you can get from intervals… plus you can use cool runner jargon like fartlek among non-running friends.