An unexpected PB

I managed to surprise myself and run an unexpected Personal Best for 5km the other day – Well, PB for recent years anyway.

I’m not supposed to be that fast quite yet as I haven’t started any speed work within this years periodised training plan yet, and going quite so hard is probably a bit naughty at the moment as well. I was scheduled to do a brick session, which involved just over an hour on the turbo trainer followed immediately by a short, 30 minute run. As race season is approaching, its time to start doing more of these and whilst on the Turbo Trainer I decided to myself that they are really only worth doing if I go fairly hard on the run. Afterall, the idea behind them is to get your legs used to running after cycling ready for a race, and I’m not going to want to run slowly in a race so I may as well go hard in training as well.

I therefore decided to myself to run hard for the first mile off the bike and then ease off so as not to push too hard so early in the season.

I jumped off the bike, quickly changed and headed out for a run into the wind towards Borth at a decent, ‘race pace’. My first mile was run in 6:21 which is pretty much spot on for race pace for me and not bad seeing as it was into the wind. I eased up for the second mile but still ran it at a decent pace, clocking a 6:49 for that mile. I then turned around and headed back. Now that the wind was on my back I was running well and the thought crossed my mind that with a pretty hard effort for the next mile I’d be pretty close to my 5k PB. I therefore picked up the pace again, and gave it all that I had through to the 5km mark.

With the wind on my back I flew along the final mile, clocking a sub-6 minute mile of 5:58 which I was pretty pleased with, giving me a 5km time of 19:46. OK, it’s not fast in comparison to many people, but it’s a PB for me and under that magic 20 minute barrier. It’s also shown me that I’m still capable of a sub 6 minute mile – If only I could keep that pace up for the whole 5km.

I’ve been using Strava.com recently to track my cycling and running, as well as the other Mac-based Training Diaries that I use. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but Strava.com lists any PB’s that you manage in a workout and also compares your efforts to others over certain segments of a course. So, here’s my run from last week on Strava, complete with my 5km PB.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.