I am officially in a bet with a college buddy as to who can be the first to break 16 for a 5k for the first time. We bet concert tickets of winner's choice plus the 7 hour drive from Atl to Cincinnati or vice versa. There will be 3 weeks after the first sub 16 for the other runner to try and match it to make up for race date irregularities.
A little background: we are both 30 and we went to college together and ran at a very slow D3 school. He was an undertrained, really talented 16:08 Xc/9:40 guy coming in and I was a run-of-the-mill 16:59 guy (although I had more speed at 2:00 and 4:30 like everyone else on this board). In any case, neither of us ever went sub 16 in college, not even on the track, because our coach had us running 40 mpw w/ 5-6 mile repeats on Monday, 400's on Tuesday, Miles again on Wed and a tempo on Thursday. Needless to say, we both got slower and eventually injured. The weight room attracted us more (since we were biking in it so often and we both gained weight and moved on). He has pretty much hung them up since then but I have been training on and off and eventually got down to 16:10 three years ago before having kids. In any case, I was diagnosed with cancer last March (stage 1, caught it very early and am healthy now) and got running 25 mpw again pretty consistently for almost the last year. I ran 16:40 last November but haven't been too serious in my training since then. He is in about 18:30 shape right now.
To add fuel to the fire, I decided to get a coach (I do coach a very successful XC team in GA but wanted some accountability) and am currently being coached by a notorious letsrun poster/coach.
Who do you take? Who would you put your money on?
Me: coached, small, but consistent base, little sleep as a teacher/coach/father of two under 3 yrs of age
Him: uncoached, talented, sleeps as much as he wants, desk job
I plan on putting training updates and keeping people informed of our progress.
Next race for me: 2/12
Last weeks training: 41m w/ 1 tempo and 1 fartlek