Hi all, I'm a 26 year old male and I just started running consistently. I've spent the last 4 weeks just doing easy runs 4-5 times a week with a focus on keeping a lower heart rate, I'm up to 15-20 miles per week. I signed up for my first 5k which is on October 28th. I have literally no idea what kind of pace to aim for. My easy runs have been about 10:30/mile pace at 140 bpm Heart Rate. Last night I decided to do a 3 mile run pretty hard to see a general idea of what I could run for a 5k.
3 mile time was 26:26 8:48/mile pace. My splits and heart rate for each split for that time trial were 9:17 (160bpm ave HR), 9:02 (151bpm ave HR), 8:07 (168bpm ave HR). Total average HR was 159bpm with a 176bpm Max HR during run. I started fairly slow as I wasn't sure what kind of pace I could maintain.
I know everyone is different, but I'm hoping to get some help coming up with a realistic goal time, and I thought these figures might be useful in arriving at that. Thanks in advance.