MILESTONES

Yesterday I was planning on 12-14 miles for my "long" run.  I ended up getting in 16, which gave me 70 for the week.  Even though I had a 5K schedule for this morning, I wasn't too worried because it the pace for my long run was nice and relaxed.

Even though I'm trying to shed some weight, I really only get on the scale once a week - typically after my Saturday run.  I was up as high as 158 and then I got "stuck" at 155-156 for the longest time.  I'm happy to report that I was down to 153 yesterday.  I still have a good 5-6 pounds to go, but it's nice to finally get below 155.

Leading up to today's 5K, I figured I'd be right around 20-flat, based on Daniels' VDOT charts.  The nice thing about 20-flat is that it makes for easy math; 20/5 = 4:00/km or 48 seconds per lap.  I was hoping to run that pace for as long as possible and then hopefully pick it up a little at the end.  As you can imagine with an indoor track meet, there weren't a lot of people in the race - maybe 20.  It's not like a local 5K where there are always people around you.  So when Michael was just ahead of me after 2 laps, I decided to try and stick with him, even though we were running a little faster than expected.  After about a mile, Mike pulled away I was left to run solo the rest of the way.  Looking at my kilometer splits below, you can see a pretty sharp drop off after 2K.  By 4K I was right at 16:00 or 16:01 and I knew breaking 20 was going to be close.  I did manage to pick it up and finish in 19:57.

3:56.5
3:56.5
4:04.3
4:03.5
3:56.6
19:57.4

I'm not sure I'd call breaking 20 a "milestone".  Not breaking 20 would probably have been a milestone, but one indicating that I was going in the wrong direction, since I probably have run over 20 minutes for 5K in 20 years.

Based on my Meet of Miles time, my VDOT was squarly between 49 and 50.  19:57 puts me at 50, so it appears I'm making baby steps.

Finally, thanks to Gary Westlund and his crew at Charities Challenge for putting on a great event.  These guys run a number of meets throughout the winter, so if you're interested in working on your speed over the winter, be sure and check them out.

Quote of the day;

"This is the longest November I can ever remember." - John Naslund, commenting on our mild winter