Following a 5K recently, I lamented to a friend of mine the struggle from the one-mile mark through two and part of the third miles. This is never an easy stretch of the race but the difference this time was the fall-off in speed. It had happened a few times during this past summer and there were various explanations: heat, elevation gain, etc. But, I didn\u2019t like the pattern. I was comfortable opening at a 6:15\/6:20 per mile pace, which would put me in the 19:30s. When I say \u201ccomfortable\u201d it wasn\u2019t where I was on the edge of a pace I wasn\u2019t sure I could hold but felt okay. I felt like the pace was a reasonable one I could stick with, if not push harder. However, even though I didn\u2019t feel like my effort was lagging, my pace would drop off.
My friend referenced a workout to help with sustaining pace through the middle part of the race. It\u2019s a total of six miles, starting and finishing with a one-mile warm-up and cool-down. The middle four are going three miles at 10K pace, followed by a fourth mile at whatever pace you can handle. The description sounded rough. But I was curious and wanted to see if I could improve on the middle section of my 5Ks so I gave it a go.
The first outing was terrible. I knew from .1 miles in (that is point one, not a typo) that I would be in trouble, not because I felt bad that early but because I could just tell. For my first three miles, I\u2019d aimed for 6:40 per mile pace, or 20:00, and came through at 19:59. At that point, I was spent and the fourth mile reflected that. It\u2019s not worth mentioning my time for the fourth mile.
I was daunted, but not to the point of not trying it again. Technically I should have been going for 6:43 miles the first time so instead of a 6:40 per mile pace, I went for 6:45s for the first three miles, or a net time of 20:15, with a slight lean towards faster than that. This time I ended up coming through the three-mile mark in 19:50 and feeling fatigued, but I still managed a 6:37 final mile. The last quarter mile did feature a significant climb so taking that out, the time would have been fair amount faster, which was hopeful. I also probably pushed a little too hard on the first three, as part of the goal is to run a hard fourth mile. Still, from a statistical standpoint, it was far superior to the first effort. I don\u2019t know how to account for that, but I\u2019ll take it.
My past speed work is usually something traditional, such as 800M or 1000M repeats which help train your body for faster leg turnover. Or, I do a threshold run to get my body acclimated to being uncomfortable over a longer period of time. This falls somewhere in the middle. New and tough, but definitely one where I’m pushing at uncomfortable intervals, which is the point of the workout. Mentally, it will certainly help on the next race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following a 5K recently, I lamented to a friend of mine the struggle from the one-mile mark through two and part of the third miles. This is never an easy stretch of the race but the difference this time was the fall-off in speed. It had happened a few times during this past summer and … <\/p>\n