Am I a rollercoaster?

After the disaster of the half marathon at the weekend, I'm on a bit of a high this evening! I completed the second race in the Cambridge Triathlon Club 5km race series, running strong all the way and even managing a sprint finish at the end (to overtake someone). Actually, considering how the first of these races went, I'm definitely at a high-point of the season so far!

Again, some very nice weather this evening (which kinda had me worried after Sunday), but I'm certainly not just going to run \ race in the cold & rain! Was determined to set off at an easy pace, but didn't fancy using HR or to try to stick at a certain pace, so just went by how I felt. It's always a danger, but one of my fellow competitors seemed about my level (he's in his 70's and has Parkinson's I found out afterwards - he's the brains behind the AnyOldIronman challenge I've been doing this month). To be honest, I was struggling to keep up and was hanging on his shoulder for a while, which is probably easier than setting the pace.

Pretty uneventful race for the next 2km - if my HR was anything to go by, I was certainly working hard. I passed and pulled away from my fellow competitor and at the 3km mark I'd caught up with another girl who had lapsed into a run\walk. After giving her a bit of encouragement, she was passed me again and stayed around 30m - 50m ahead until we turned for the final straight - I gave it as much as I had and passed her with about 30 meters to go. I felt a bit guilty about it I have to say!

Finishing time was 27m 33s - a new official PB. That said, I think I've done a 27m 12s in training before. HR was sky-high (avg 175bpm\max 186bpm). Didn't get negative splits, doing the first half in 13m 32s and the second in 14m 01s.

I've uploaded a comparison screenshot between the first race and tonights - I think a picture speaks a thousand words. A few points to note:

• See the two dots on the map - still had a bit of a way to go in the first race
• Tonights effort (blue) was at a constant effort throughout (apart from the sprint finish) - see the HR graph and average speed graph
• Tortoise and hare - slow and steady wins the race - the delta distance shows that I was ahead of myself in the first race from the 10 minute mark onwards - sweet.
  

How NOT to run a 5km

Start out all guns blazing - it's a sure way to end up in a heap. I found this out to my detriment earlier this evening in the first race of a three race series I'm doing. The event is being organised by the local triathlon club and it's about a 5 minute walk from work, so I'd no excuses. I even skipped GAA training for it.

5km is a pretty tough distance - it's short enough that the aim should be to do it just under all-out effort. However, it does help if you know what your limit is!

Set off on todays race after warming up for a few minutes. Started off strong, as I'd good memories of the Reading Half marathon and lasting a fair distance with a good pace. Looked at the garmin at one point and I was in the low four min zone! Felt good and started contemplating my 20 minute 5km! What a fool!!!

Of course it was never going to last - according to the garmin & sport tracks it lasted all over 7 minutes (1.42km). As you should be able to see in the pic below, it was a battle to get to the end after that - short runs followed by rests - depressing stuff!

To mock me even further (I'm joking) there was also a kids 2.5km race which set of a few mins after the full 5km - I was getting passed by some of the youngsters before my first walk break - fair play to them - they were absolutely flying.

Anyways, my splits sum up this race nicely - 4.42, 6.01, 6.53, 6.25 and 6.09. Lesson learnt - the fable of the tortoise and hare comes to mind.