Sub-20 5k or bust!

It's time to stop talking about it, enter a race, and put up or shut up.

VICTORY! AND FAILURE!

Knee felt better yesterday, so thought about going to the track early in the morning...but it was really windy, so I bailed.

This morning, was low 40's and pretty much windless. Had a decaf and a banana, and got to the track early. Went to a college track that is farther away, but that I know is open. I had the heat cranked in the car for the short drive, then did a slow half lap to get moving, then did a one-lap warmup. I felt pretty good, I had a solid 9 hours of sleep last night. The track was a pretty soft surface, which I thought would be great for this run.

Had 12.5 laps in front of me. Did not feel cold even though that is a cold temp for me. Had gloves and a headband on, and wore my crap old Adidas with the midsole that is cracked all the way through. I figured on sticking to 48-second 200m's, and wore my watch that has a countdown-repeat timer. I was going to aim for 45-second laps if I could, to give some cushion if I died.

Started, and felt good. Went through the first 200 in 32 seconds! Way too fast. Eased off, and did the next few in probably about 42-43 seconds, because I was more ahead of the beep.

I set the watch to beep at 48-second intervals, and all I knew was that I needed to make the 200's before the beep went off.

Eased back a bit more because I was starting to feel it, but then picked it up again just because it felt more comfortable. Was more and more ahead of the beep, then I ignored the beep, because I was too far ahead of it and lost the spot.

Felt like I increased the pace slightly throughout.

3 laps to go, was breathing hard, but on good pace. 2 laps to go I thought it would never end. 1 lap to go, I resisted the urge to lay it out. 200 to go, I resisted the urge to sprint, as this was the first time. I just wanted to get it over with asap.

Finished in 18:52!

18:52

Is there a way to make the font size larger?

18:52

Was hugely winded at the finish, sucked wind for a minute, but could have sprinted faster anyway.

BUT, am now starting to feel the knee that was giving me issues on the mill. I thought it was MCL, but now I think it might be a bit of cartilage irritation. Not bad, but I will def not do any mill for a week, if it is cartilage it really needs rest. I hate the mill, running on the track was so much easier.

I was stupid, though, because maybe I could have gone sub-18:30. I could have gone faster by picking it up on the last lap--which I should have done, because here I am with an irritated knee, anyway.

Failure. I should have gone as fast as I could with a lap to go. Also better pacing in the middle probably would have helped, I felt a bit jagged, not smooth. I would pick it up, and at some point notice that I had slowed down, or at least felt like it. It would be great to have some sort of a visible lap timer for this, or something that would time 200m intervals. If I ever do this again, I might take 2 people and put them at the turns, to tell me interval times--or just get my wife out to time laps.

If my guesstimate of 18:30 is right, then I am only exactly as fast as I was years ago when I set my treadmill best, after I had gotten sick and lost a bunch of weight. I assume that I had lost aerobic capacity, and had built it up a bit over the past 6 months, and with a bit of weight loss got me back to where I was before.

It feels pretty good. I'm a bit pissed that it was that "easy", you guys were right, I should have tried a time trial maybe a month or more ago.

I would like to hit it again, but I have vowed to do no running until my knee is perfect again--and I hope not to do any more treadmill anytime soon. If my knee is better and if weather cooperates, I will hit it again in a week or two, just to see how it goes.

I still think that one runs differently on the mill--exactly how, I am not sure. What I can say is that I find it easier to run on a track. For the main part of this run I used a very upright running style, with minimal arm action and medium-length strides, for me. Man, I should have laid it out on the last lap.

IDK where I go from here. While I want to call it quits and switch back to sprint/power stuff, I am tempted to keep this going, and enter some race at some point--problem is that winter is coming, and I don't want to train in the freezing cold, nor do I really want to do any more treadmill stuff, the injuries bother me. Good problem to have. I will see how I feel after taking some time off for my knee. One thing I would like to try would be to get in a race with some guys who are fast, and try to stick with them for as long as possible before dying.

I am blown away by how much easier real running felt, than the treadmill. You guys will be happy to know that I didn't measure my HR once outside. Also, I did absolutely no warmdown, I was too happy about my time to even think about it.

Wow, I feel great, except for the knee, which I hope is minor. Still morning, and I cracked a can of coffee-beer already to celebrate. Just one, though. I am going to have a giant bunch of curried chicken rice for lunch, along with half a gallon of fresh OJ, then try to be productive for the afternoon. I thought for sure I would die in the cold, but it wasn't too bad at all. I have spent some time outside this fall, not working out, and I think I was a bit acclimatized. I get why you guys get used to doing this in what I consider to be cold.

I am pretty sure that if I continued this for any length of time at my BMI, that I would break down, and maybe get colds all the time like distance runners seem to do. I think I'm geared for shorter, faster stuff, just from a health perspective.

Fvckin' A, I can't believe it.

Time to Race wrote:

It's time to stop talking about it, enter a race, and put up or shut up.

Hey Turd, I was actually running, not just talking about it.

Curious what people say now, who said that my attempt would never work.

Not only did it work, I think it worked amazingly well. You may think differently, given that I have been at this for 6 months, and think that the improvements have been trivial. I feel that they have been significant.

BTW this board is great for keeping a training log like this. It helped me, just having a place to easily look up old stuff, and see progress.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Curious what people say now, who said that my attempt would never work.

Not only did it work, I think it worked amazingly well. You may think differently, given that I have been at this for 6 months, and think that the improvements have been trivial. I feel that they have been significant.

Good job. Your approach was unconventional, but you proved we are an experiment of one. Nice!

I cant believe your method worked OP :D

good job

now enter an actual race and get a gun time? Gobble Gobble?

That's great.

Good exemple of how you can achieve your goal keeping focused.

How much time did you need?

Congratulations!

Speechless !

Really Enjoyed this thread!

You tore 20:00 a new cornhole. Crushed it.

Gotta admit, have been totally unproductive today after my 5k, lol everything has been downhill since. I should have taken the day off.

Because I'm ignorant, I had total faith in my "system". Maybe that's an ingredient for success, believing that something will work even when told that it won't. And who knows, maybe it didn't work the best and I would have gone faster having done something else. All I know is that I got faster over 5k. That's the great thing about distance vs sprinting IMO, doing distance you can build capacity steadily and cumulatively. In my experience short sprinting is different. You don't really build capacity, instead you just approach your potential (with some capacity build on start/early acceleration)--that is, you don't really increase your potential, you just try to get as close to it as possible, without getting injured. There is always the search for the elusive perfect race.

I think the two are different things, but maybe I'm wrong. Sprinters are more born than made, which is why half of them don't train worth a crap, they're just fast. Now I'm no distance guy and even though that time is pretty good, I'm not fast--but I do feel like I have more aerobic capacity now than when I started. No way I could have approached this time 6 months ago, and lived.

The knee is definitely tweaked, though. Damn I should have gone as fast as I could, now I feel like an idiot. Also I should have TT'd a month or two ago like you guys said, after less treadmill and when my knee was good, and then I probably would have known to have gone faster this time. I hope it gets completely better.

I'm still riding high. LMAO I haven't felt like this for a long time--it's a mix of happiness and absurdity, because tbh I felt like I could get it, but I didn't know.

One thing I'm thinking is that the treadmill I use isn't calibrated properly, and I am just lucky that it runs fast, and not slow. Good luck helps, too bad that my good luck came in something so trivial. I should go buy a lottery ticket.

I hope that by tomorrow I can concentrate again. Of course now I am wondering how fast I could go if it was warmer, and I was in a race drafting behind some fast guys. I was bent over and sucking wind after this, it was not in any way "easy", but it was satisfying. I have also been fantasizing about running in 4% shoes, I have no idea if it matters over 5k.

This was a great project. I am on the verge of setting another goal, that of breaking 12-seconds at 53 yrs old, FAT 100m. I feel like I could do anything at this point. I think that I will heal up, and then start up a real sprint program again, short-to-long, with the goal of going sub-12 next summer. 11.8 would be spectacular for me, but I think I would be satisfied with sub-12. IMO it will be harder than this 5k, because to get the bit of polish at the end, I will be courting injury. Of course I injured myself on the treadmill, too. Maybe I'm just not that durable. And no, I won't burden this board with a training log, it would take too long anyway.

lol the last time I felt this good, I had gotten silver in a 55m at a good college meet, as a young geezer. Wow that was 20 years ago. I guess I'm just a dumb jock at heart.

Charlie wrote:

Congratulations!

Speechless !

Really Enjoyed this thread!

Thanks! I know it took a long time and was probably boring, but heck, at least it finished early. :^)

geezergoat wrote:

You tore 20:00 a new cornhole. Crushed it.

Yeah, given what I was doing on the treadmill, no way did I think I would go this fast. Even when I was consistently ahead of the beeps and then ignored them, I thought that I would pay for it and die closer to the end, but I didn't.

The only thing I can think of is that the treadmill is wrong, or that the speed that someone gave me earlier in the thread was too fast. Or maybe I have more energy in the morning. My treadmill workouts were always late afternoon except at the end, when I did one at lunch and felt great. I didn't use an alarm this morning, and just slept until I felt ready to wake up, so there was no early trauma.

The watch time was right, because I had left my phone at the finish and checked it as I was doubled over trying to breathe, and it read 19 minutes and counting. 8 seconds was probably what it took me to walk back to the line after running through it and taking a few breaths.

Splitting the first 200 in 32 shows surprisingly inaccurate/imprudent pace judgement. 45 second "laps" would be truly impressive on a 400m track, so that reference would seem to be for 200m splits. If your aim was 45-second 200m splits, why set your watch for 48 seconds beeps? 96s laps puts you at a 20:48 5K, so you would have been pacing for failure. Given you ran significantly faster, 48s alerts would have almost immediately been useless for checking and adjusting pace.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

... I was going to aim for 45-second laps if I could, to give some cushion if I died.

...Went through the first 200 in 32 seconds! Way too fast. Eased off, and did the next few in probably about 42-43 seconds, because I was more ahead of the beep.

...I set the watch to beep at 48-second intervals

Short track, keep trying

Not a good post, Ernest.

Congratulations geezer, that is amazing. How are you feeling? That’s pretty close to my 50+ PR, and I do a lot of running.

But I’m still faster :)

But seriously, good work. Being a geezer myself I appreciate that you went for it before the injuries got too bad. I wish I was better at recognizing when my body was about to give out because I have gotten injured during my peak fitness more than once, before I could deliver my best performance.

Too bad you didn’t get in a race, you could have placed well as an age grouper. That 9:58 2-mile when you were a kid showed that you had the ability, but actually working toward it and doing it was great.

Good luck on your 100m project. I have no idea how fast 12 seconds is at your age. It would be funny if your 5k ended up a better performance than your 100m on the age-graded tables.

Ernest wrote:

Splitting the first 200 in 32 shows surprisingly inaccurate/imprudent pace judgement.

45 second "laps" would be truly impressive on a 400m track, so that reference would seem to be for 200m splits.

If your aim was 45-second 200m splits, why set your watch for 48 seconds beeps?

96s laps puts you at a 20:48 5K, so you would have been pacing for failure. Given you ran significantly faster, 48s alerts would have almost immediately been useless for checking and adjusting pace.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

... I was going to aim for 45-second laps if I could, to give some cushion if I died.

...Went through the first 200 in 32 seconds! Way too fast. Eased off, and did the next few in probably about 42-43 seconds, because I was more ahead of the beep.

...I set the watch to beep at 48-second intervals

96 second laps come out to 6:24. That is like a 19:51, give or take a second.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Charlie wrote:

@SG Age graded tables gotta love em!

17 year old 10 minute 2 mile equates to 53 year old running 18:36/5000!

Yes but that was a scrawny 160-lb 17-yr old!

WTF I wrote this one tongue in cheek but you delivered!

BTW Started doing an SG inspired treadmill workout: 2 minutes total shorten rest x 10 good stuff!

Ernest wrote:

Splitting the first 200 in 32 shows surprisingly inaccurate/imprudent pace judgement.

45 second "laps" would be truly impressive on a 400m track, so that reference would seem to be for 200m splits.

If your aim was 45-second 200m splits, why set your watch for 48 seconds beeps?

96s laps puts you at a 20:48 5K, so you would have been pacing for failure. Given you ran significantly faster, 48s alerts would have almost immediately been useless for checking and adjusting pace.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

... I was going to aim for 45-second laps if I could, to give some cushion if I died.

...Went through the first 200 in 32 seconds! Way too fast. Eased off, and did the next few in probably about 42-43 seconds, because I was more ahead of the beep.

...I set the watch to beep at 48-second intervals

Wow, on top of all the petty, gratuitous, obnoxiousness, you can't even do a little freaking arithmetic.

96-second laps would give about 19:52, so you're a full minute off.

Clearly, Geezer's a lot better at math than you are. (And also somewhat less of an a**hole.)