5k Prep

It looks like this blog may become a race-report blog, and considering how rarely I'm racing these days, I guess we can look forward to quarterly updates.

Last I wrote, I ran the Fast & the Furriest on very little training and shocked myself with my performance. Today I'm writing under similar circumstances.

When I ran F&F, I was already signed up for the Sup & Run 5k, but having over six weeks to prepare, I wasn't feeling a sense of urgency in training. As usual, April/May have been hard to run through. We're getting summer weather, complete with rainstorms, high heat and humidity, and tons of pollen. Add in end-of-year exhaustion and it's a perfect storm for waylaid training.

Still, I've done alright. My fellow CRTs and I have taken on a May challenge where we do 25 each of squats, pushups, and core exercises every day in our office around lunchtime. It's not much, but it's been a good influence to have them focused on this with me, it's broken up my days nicely, and it's keeping all of us motivated to eat a little healthier throughout the day.

I've managed to keep a fairly light schedule of two runs a week and have been easy on myself as far as heat acclimation goes. I've gotten at least one rainy run in, which reminded me that my legs actually can be fast when the weather cooperates, and just yesterday I tackled an interval workout (quarter mile repeats) that went really well.

I love creating workouts for my watch now that I have my new Garmin. Setting a goal pace for my intervals has been incredibly rewarding; I tend to sprint my first few repeats much too fast and burn out by the end. Using the workout function on my Vivoactive kept me within pace and allowed me to complete the full workout at peak performance. (I set my intervals between 8:50-9:00, not going for anything too gutsy, and ran them around 8:45, so it was a success!)

Anyway, all this is to say that I haven't been working incredibly hard for this race, but I haven't been slacking entirely. I'm not running well in the heat yet, so I'm planning to run conservatively, but based on my past 5ks I feel like I'll probably surprise and please myself.

There are a couple weeks to go until race day. Until then, I plan to just keep on keeping on.

ABK