5Ks: The Struggle is Real!

The older I get, the worse I seem to get at 5Ks.  I haven’t trained specifically for a 5K since college (or since high school because I was injured more than not during college running), but even so I would expect that I could eek out a decent 5K while I am PRing at other distances.  I’ve raced a lot of 5Ks over the years because they are common and convenient, but in 2015 I could not run one that was comparable to my other race performances to save my life.

Put in perspective:  my fastest 5K of 2015 was the second 5K of a 10K.  This was the only time I broke 19:00, with an 18:51 second 5K (although technically I did finish one 5K in 18:42, it was a bit short and my average pace on my Garmin was 6:09 so it shouldn't have been sub-19).  Most of my certified 5Ks were 19:0X, and a few slower than that (I did manage to keep them all under 20:00, though - even during two races in which I took wrong turns as the leader to make them 3.25ish mile 5Ks!).  I could never get those few extra seconds to go sub-19! To make my 5K races even more pathetic, the final 5K of my 1:24 PR half marathon was 19:10!!!  So following running 10 miles at 6:30ish pace, I can run a 5K just a few seconds slower than my all-out 5K.  Following running 3.1 miles of a 10K in 19:14, I can run another 3.1 miles faster than my all-out 5K.  What the heck!? I tried running longer and faster warm ups before my 5Ks but still no luck. 

I had some workouts that I thought meant for a promising or even PR 5K (my current PR is 18:18 run in 2010), including my best mile repeat workout of all time which was 4 x 1 mile all between 5:49-5:51, but I could never put together a nice 5K race.  My last of 2015 was on New Year’s Eve, and my time in it was the best I did for a certified straight 5K: 19:03.  The irony in that one was that it was also by far the most challenging course I ran, with 212 feet of elevation gain.

I’ve only run one 5K thus far in 2016, and if I had known what the course was like beforehand I probably would have never gone (more details here)!  The first half mile was all straight uphill, and there wasn’t really a flat stretch in the whole thing (several rollers after the first up, then a steep up and steep down before the turn around...the main redemption being that that last half mile was all downhill since it was out and back).  Once I saw the first hill and ran the course for my warm-up, I was ready to turn around and go home, and I told Jon that I wouldn’t be able to get under 20:00, especially considering that I was 6 days off racing the Prairie Fire Half and had done no speed work.  The reason we went to this one was because it had nice prize money for the top 3 women and the times hadn’t been under 20:00 for #2 and #3 in most past years (our local Olympic Trials qualifier was always #1), so I decided I wouldn’t worry about my time and just try to place.  I didn’t look at my watch during the race because I knew my pace would be super erratic with the elevation changes, and I ended up running 19:16, which I was shocked and amazed with on that course and with how my spring training had been.

I am going to run another 5K this Saturday, and I’m not as terrified about this one as I usually get of them, because I’m expecting to run slower than 10K pace!  In fact, it’s slated as a tempo workout for me, and will fall at the end of a 53+ mile week and after a Thursday workout and double run, so I won’t exactly be rested.  My tempo pace has been 6:18-6:30 per my coach, and I am going to aim for 6:20ish so I can keep it under 20:00 (and also go for the win).  It’s a huge relief to not even think about aiming for under 19:00, and I haven’t done much running under tempo pace in 2016 (I think only a couple of reps this speed workout, the 19:16 5K I raced in May, and 6 x 20 second strides which I do once a week usually), so my speed is definitely not there even if I wanted to try!

Why are 5Ks so hard and scary?   Give me a half marathon any day!