In order to track my progress as I hopefully get fitter and fitter with training, I decided to put myself through a week one 5km time trial this morning. I knew this was going to really hurt as I’ve literally done no anaerobic activity at all in around 18 months combined with my lack of fitness.
I really just couldn’t get into a smooth rhythm at all and my core felt weak at the greater pace. At times I did not feel like I was going fast at all and I imagine I probably looked terrible too.
Setting out I had no idea what I was capable of, literally none. I decided to aim for sub 3 hour pace, 4:16/km as a purely psychological target; if I can run that for 5km now, then all I have to do is extend my capability.
I can extatically report that I managed a time of 21:16 (4:15/km) despite questionable pacing and just really battling. My km splits were as follows: 4:03, 4:11, 4:23, 4:12, 4:26, not the metronomic consistency Eliud Kipchoge executes.
Looking back I also need to toughen up my mind as I also struggled to force myself to keep going when it got uncomfortable. I’m hoping this is just a function of having no recent anaerobic memory to draw on, but I’ll monitor this and make it a focus at some point. I’m sure the struggles over a full marathon are much tougher than this simple 5km.
My legs are now completely beaten up and I’m not sure how I’m going to do a long run tomorrow morning but I’ll see. I expect significant calf, hamstring, quad and groin stiffness.
Anyway, with a decent benchmark 5km time by my standards on the board I look forward to seeing that time come down quickly. Equivalent race pace calculators on the internet estimate that I will need to improve it by around 3 minutes (14%) over the next 18 months to get into sub 3 hour marathon shape.
