2000 Tommys American 5k

Well, another race....another PW.....by 34 seconds this time. L I ran my 10k PW three weeks ago and repeated with my 5k PW today. The race was a downer. I’m moving backwards at the moment. And I think I know why.

The highlight of the day was a forum encounter. I met two Mervites, Roger and Mark, for the first time. Unfortunately, I missed another Mervite, Jimmy, and a RW Marathons forumite, Lynn Schwartz. I couldn’t locate them in the crowd of about 1200 runners. Meeting Roger and Mark was great. They proved again that runners are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. J I also met a nice young guy in the looooong ice cream line named Mark who I had followed for awhile in the race. He said he has visited the RW Beginners Forum a few times since he started running in February and got some good advice from some folks here who obviously weren’t beginners. He posted under the name Hot Chocolate 96....or something like that. He said he might drop by and post a report from today’s race.

The weather was a bit warm (low-70s) and moderately humid, but it certainly could have been a lot worse for early July. The first 2/10 mile of the out-and-back course was downhill, which made the last 2/10 uphill. However, the course in downtown D.C wasn’t really a hilly one, although there were few truly flat sections. Mostly moderately short, gentle rises and falls.

My running has been so screwed up lately, I didn’t have a good basis for goal-setting today, so I used Kentucky windage. My previous PW was 27:33, but I had little confidence that I could beat that today. In the 10k 3-weeks ago, my 5k split was 30:30 and I knew I should at least be able to better that today. So I used those two extremes to set goals. I set sub-30 as a floor goal, sub-29 as a realistic goal, and sub-28 as an optimistic goal.....pretty wide goal spread for a 5k, but that’s what I’m down to working with during this slump.

My plan was to go out in about 9:10 for the first mile and try to pick it up for the last two miles to see how close I could come to my optimistic goal. With a little luck....OK, a lot of luck....I thought I might avoid another PW. Well, I blew that plan. My splits were 8:56, 9:10, 9:09 and :51 for the last .107 mile (7:56 pace) for a total chip time and new PW of 28:07 (9:03 average pace). My clock time was 28:31.

I can’t just blame this one on weather or course. Neither was bad enough to cause a PW. Like the 10k 3 weeks ago, it’s mostly due to excess weight......I’ve never been as heavy for a race as I’ve been for the last two. But, after today I have to admit to myself that I also have another problem. A clue to the problem was my ability to increase the pace today from 9:09 in mile 3 to 7:56 in the last .107 mile while running uphill. I shouldn’t have had that much left if I had run a better race. I am simply no longer able to push myself as far out of the “comfort zone” deeper into the anaerobic range earlier in the race and hold it as I used to be able to do. And my problem has two parts.....mental and physical. The mental part will correct itself with physical progress....and cooler weather. The greater part of the problem is physical. A key missing ingredient in my running is hills. All of my running....training and racing.....during 3-months in Florida was on pancake-flat terrain. And the B&A Trail where I train here at home in Maryland is mostly flat. It has a few gentle slopes, plus a couple of moderately challenging hills….but it certainly isn’t what one would call hilly terrain. Two consecutive years of that “softness” in my training pattern has taken a toll.

I do run on a treadmill about twice a week when I go to the gym for weight training. Last year, I sometimes ran hill repeats on the treadmill and I made progress with my racing. I haven’t done that this year and, as a result, I have lost running strength. I’m going to run a hill repeat session each week on the treadmill for awhile. I need strength running. I also haven’t run any repetitions and VO2max workouts in the last 3 months. I’ve just been doing a little threshold stuff while base-building for a fall marathon program, which begins tomorrow and should add some structure and intensity to my training and help me to pull out of this slump. Now, if I can just discipline myself to cut out a lot of the pancake breakfasts......... J

Good postrace party with hamburgers, cole slaw, potato salad, muffins, watermelon and ice cream. Also a cool DJ.

Jim2

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