Well this was not the week that I was looking for but it is what I got. School is finally coming to an end for yet another year and things are getting really busy. So with all this comes little time to run. I am still not really good at time management so this hurts the running as sometimes other tings have to go before it. There was some foot problems that developed during the week though.
Monday - 7 (48:30)
Tuesday - off due to school
Wednesday - same thing
Thursday - 8 (60:00)
Ran with a girl that made the pace pretty slow. It is kind of weird how running so slow can actually really hurt. Foot started hurting pretty bad during this run.
Friday - 6 (35:30)
Easy day in University park. Today I woke up and by foot was not feeling good at all. I was able to get through the run and get home and start hitting the anti inflammatory meds and ice. This seemed to really help a lot as there was barely any pain the next morning.
Saturday - 2.5 mile w/u
5k race (16:07)
1.5 mile c/d
5k splits were pretty much dead even throughout the entire race. I don't have my splits in front of me but I do remember some of them.
1k - 3:15
1mile - 5:10
2k - 6:29
3k - 9:45
2mile - 10:23
4k - 13:00
3 mile - 15:36
5k - 16:07
Before the race I was thinking that I was going to go out at 5:15-5:20 pace to start and then see how I felt after that and go from there. I figured that this would put me in good shape to run around 16:20-16:30. But when I looked at the heat sheets for the race there was a guy at 16 flat and then the next one was at 16:30. So there was a lead pack that was developed right away of about 12 guys. The leaders went through the mile around 4:50 and the back of that pack was about 5:00 with me through at 5:10 as the leader of the second pack. I felt really good at this point so I decided that I was just going to keep this pace as long as I could and see if I can start to pick a couple of guys off. Over the next 2-3 laps I started making some real progress on the guys in front of me and passed a couple of them. I was a little worried at 3k when I came through it at basically the same time that I ran the time trial two weeks earlier. I was still feeling alright but I was a little worried about the end of the race being that there was a couple of guys that knew I was going to catch before the end of the race. I caught 2 more guys with 800m to go and these are the guys that I finished the race with. I stuck behind them for another lap and made my move with 300m to go. With 150m to go it was me and one other guy so it was going to be a sprint finish. I ran the last 200 in 30-31 seconds and was able to hold the kid off which was really a big surprise to me. I had done the 3k time trial and 3 strides down the football field before the race for speed and that was about it. Other than that the last time that I ran that fast was probably either the TC 10mile last fall or conference a year ago. This was one of those races that I was really pleased with. There is nothing that I could have done that would have made me run any faster today. No regrets on the strategy of the race.
Those are what I can remember from what people were saying during the race. And I think that when I looked at my watch splits they were pretty similar. So I must say that overall I thought the race went extremely well. Having only been running for a month it was great to see that I still had some speed and that I could run a half way decent 5k. I guess that only puts me 7 seconds away from being back in shape.
Race Grade - A
Time Grade - C+ (A for where I am at right now)
Sunday - off
Week: 28 miles
April total: 160
Overall the week was not what I wanted it to be with all of the days off. My foot I was a little worried about before the race during the warmup but during the race it didn't hurt at all, at least I don't remember that pain at all. It was pretty bad on after the race and then on Sunday it was alright ut not great. I took Monday off this week as well already to give it one more day of icing and pain killers and it seemed to help. No pain on Tuesdays run and no pain today either. There is still a lot of development that needs to occur over the next couple months but in due time the racing times will be where I want then to be.