Yesterday, after over a decade of bad-to-average 8ks / 5 milers, I BEAT my college PR of 26:40 from 2010. The past ~7 weeks of training have been great so I thought I had a chance. Here’s what happened!
The race was the Run for Blue. I was alone from the gun and my plan was to try and run 5:20s the whole time. I picked that pace because that’s what I thought I could do by myself, but it’s coincidentally exactly 26:40 pace!
- My first mile was right around 5:20.
- My second mile was also right around 5:20.
- My third mile was something like… 5:20.
- My fourth mile…. 5:20!
Approaching the finish line I saw the clock ticking up to 26:3x and with a slight surge I cruised in at 26:38, a new PR. *Technically each of my 5 mile splits during Broad Street was faster than that, but Broad Street doesn’t count as a real race.
Honestly, it didn’t feel like a big deal because of how… expected it was? But I have to be happy with a PR. Special thanks to Meghan for coming to cheer me on and hold my stuff while I ran!
What does this translate to?!
I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about this result. Here are my thoughts:
- This wasn’t all out – Being alone the whole way, I didn’t / couldn’t go 100%. I thought 5:20s would be a really good effort and that turned out to be true. I’d like to think with competition I could do ~4 seconds a mile faster?
- The wind… – It’s an easy excuse but the wind was genuinely tough and doing it alone was not easy. I’ll give myself ~5 seconds for the wind.
- 5 miles vs 8k – An 8k (Rothman) is 4.97 miles. 0.03 miles at 5 minute pace is 9 seconds.
Based on all that, I’d like to THINK yesterday was worth pretty close to 26:00 on a perfect Rothman day. My goal starting this training block was in fact to break 26 at Rothman, so I should be in a great spot to do so given that I have five full weeks of training to get there.
Between now and then I’m also targeting an even older PR at the UC Twilight meet in two weeks – a 9:43 3200m from 2009. Let’s continue rewriting the PR book!
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