Winfield 5K

The Winfield 5K went fine today -- 24:30 -- 2nd place in my age group. Not nearly as fast as I had hoped (22:00), but, hey, I'm still running and feeling good. No pains to speak of. Oh, my knee hurts a little now, but it is something I will be living with. That's what I need to keep in mind -- I'm out there living a healthy lifestyle. My times will come down as I persevere through this. Nobody ever hands you anything in running -- you earn everything. And I can honestly say now that it gets tougher with age. But that's OK -- if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.

My miles were 7:26, 8:04?, 8:57 (8:08 pace) or the last 1.1 miles. Good pace, certainly challenging for me, pretty balanced. It was a nice course, a couple of challenging uphills, but not bad.

I'll keep increasing the mileage -- try to hit 25ish? a week (I'm at 18 now). And do some longer intervals -- maybe two mile repeats this week in 8:00 each (with 2 minutes between repeats).

So maybe it can go this way this week, August 3-9:

Monday -- 5ish miles, 9:00-9:20 pace.

Wednesday -- Mile warmup, 2x1-mile in 8 minutes, with 2 minute rest between repeats, 1.5 mile cooldown (4.5 miles).

Friday -- 3 miles fairly easy, 9:15 pace, then throw in 4-5 20-second strides.

Saturday -- 4-4.5 miles, throw in some fartlek, about 5 surges or so.

Then the next week (Aug. 10-16), try to hit 6 miles with a long run -- I'll run two days with the Columbus team. I'm thinking another run could be interval pace 1,000s (4 x 1,000 in 4:40 or so -- I don't know about rest).

Then the next week (Aug. 17-23), not quite as long on the long run, but try one day of shorter interval reps (5-6 400s in 1:45ish to 1:50).

Then the next week (Aug. 24-30), up the long run to 6.5 or something like that.


Miles on my new shoes -- 94.5