Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Looking forward to fast times in 2018


When I set myself the goal of racing 5k in 22:45 or faster at the beginning of 2017 I thought I'd be closing the year by writing about the successful achievement of this goal. Unfortunately not! My fastest 5k remains the 23:32 achieved at the Tuggeranong Parkrun in March. Recent racing and form has me feeling optimistic about running a 22:45 5k in 2018. Conditions will need to be good though — cool and calm. Recently it's been very warm in the mornings and as a big sweater, I don't do well in warm conditions. For the CJs' 5k lunch runs in spring it was inevitably blowing a gale.

Last weekend I had a good 'double' of races — Tuggeranong Parkrun 5k on Saturday in 24:06 (very warm at 22C) and on Sunday, the 'Tour de Ridges' 10.6k trail race in 57:09 which equalled my PB from 2014. The other run that gives me confidence was an interval session the previous Tuesday — 3 x 1k in 4:33, 4:22 and 4:33 with 1k jog recoveries. That's my 5k race goal pace, run on a warm (26C) day. Bring on some cool mornings!

One thing I've struggled to get right on a 'traditional' training plan (as opposed to Verheul training), is the correct effort/pace for easy days. I've always tended to run too fast. I've never had enough separation of effort between hard days and easy days. Former Australian 10,000m record holder Shaun Creighton talked about this in a recent podcast. You can listen to the interview here, starting at 63 minutes. Shaun has recently broken the Australian M50 5000m record, running 15:34.71. He said that he's always run the easy days very easy, the reason being that in order to improve, the body is stressed on hard days and allowed to recover (and supercompensate) on easy days. This is something I want to improve on in 2018 — run very easily and relaxed on easy days.

Celebrating after the Tour de Ridges on Sunday