The Wasatch Walkers (well, the ones who raced this morning): Carol, Shelly, Boyd, Nancy, Madeline, Diane, TammyI had my slowest 5K ever today. OK, well, it was faster than the one I raced while pushing Calvin in the stroller. And it was faster than the hilly 5K (that was really farther than 5K...) that I walked before I took Dave's RW clinic. But it was the slowest 5K I've done since taking Dave's clinic for the first time in April 2007.
I'm not at all surprised by how slow I was, given my lack of training. I thought I'd be really disappointed, but I'm not. More about that later.
Brief race recap: I tried to start out pretty conservatively, because I remembered how lousy I felt during my track 2Ks on Tuesday. I did 6:10 for the first 1K, with ave HR 159, and felt OK. I tried not to speed up too much on the 2nd one, and did it in 6:06. I was starting to feel my legs getting tired. Though my coach had told me to keep it to 85% effort, I just couldn't resist pushing it. Yeah, I know, not a good idea, but I just couldn't help it. I pushed and did the 3rd 1K in 6:03. I was tired, and remembered that I was not supposed to push so hard, so I did back off a little on the 4th 1K (6:09). Finally, I saw the club members (who had started anywhere from 6-14 minutes ahead of me) just ahead and I tried to catch them. I only caught up with one, and it turned out that because of some timing errors, she hadn't started far enough in front of me, and so I didn't actually beat anyone...no big surprise since I figured I'd be more out of shape than everyone else. The last 1K was in 6:03 for 30:31 total.
I am a bit sad to have raced 5K over 30 min, but had a good chat with my coach, who told me that things would take a little while, but that I'd see a little improvement here and there, and that once my fast-twitch muscles and my nervous system remember how to do all of this that I will see rapid progress. It's going to happen, but it's just a question of when it will happen. I hope that things will turn around before July, but it is going to be what it is. Meanwhile, I'm just hoping to get under 30 minutes for our next club race on May 1st. I'm actually feeling pretty positive and looking forward to seeing what happens.
Edited to add: my foot felt fine all morning, and is slightly sore tonight. I'm skipping the PT exercises and icing it for the 2nd time today. It's doing pretty well, considering. I'm still planning on an easy 12k tomorrow morning.
2 comments:
Hey, my judged PR is 30:42. :-)
I know that you've gone 2 minutes faster and, at your age, your speed will come back.
Ollie - thanks. This race wasn't judged; we don't have enough judges and they want to race. We all trust each other not to run :). Plus we allow people to do slightly bent knees since we have some fitness walkers.
Hopefully my speed will come back soon. I miss it!
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