5K PR

Wow, that was easy.

The Weston Memorial Day 5K is my home-town race, and the first running race I ever did. It was also the fastest race I'd ever run, after all, I was running from a man with a knife.

Since then, I've had faster runs, but have never put up a faster pace in a race than that one. When I collected all my races on Athlinks recently, I was shocked to see how little improvement I've had running. Part of that was from not repeating races, but another part was, I think, that I just wasn't training correctly.

Over the last year, I've taken up the Maffetone style of training. I've seen a great improvement, I think.

So here are my prior races:

Weston 5K
Time	Pace	Year
23:14	7:28	2008
23:52	7:40	2009
23:17	7:29	2010

I didn't run the race in 2011. And here's today's race:

Weston 5K, 2012
Time	Pace
22:13	7:10

And for reference, here's the table from my Maffetone Method Update post, showing my improvement over the past many months:

	Paine to Pain			Tempo
Mile	Pace	HR		Pace	HR
1	8:08.2	170		8:57.9	183
2	9:23.2	181		9:51.3	166
3	8:53.9	182		7:52.6	168
4	9:49.4	178		9:21.2	163
5	8:35.6	179		8:05.9	166

Here are the splits and HRs from today's race (I'm using the times from my Garmin Forerunner 310XT, which, as always, are off the official times):

Weston 5K, 2012 Splits
Mile	Pace	HR
1	6:48	177
2	7:00	185
3	7:34	186
0.12	6:46	191
3.12	7:07	183

What blew my mind about this race was how easy it felt. I was pooped at the end, as you should be, but not nearly as bad as in some other races I've run, where I didn't go nearly as fast. And after a few minutes and a couple sips of water I was planning a long run for tomorrow morning with a friend. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that 1. The Maffetone Method is working for me, and 2. I could go a lot faster if I keep this up. Which I will.

The key thing is that my training for this race has been between erratic and nonexistent. The only consistent running I've done since I pulled my calf last fall was in the last week. While I wanted to PR, I didn't really expect to, because my training's been all over the place. I'm very happy.

I'd also like to note the amazing timing system this race uses. I got back from the race and checked my email, and discovered this:

Yes, that's right. They sent the results to my Gmail account 4 hours before the race finished! That is incredible. I guess I'm lucky I didn't check my email before the race, or I might not have even bothered to run it!

Oh, and I wore my Speeds, which are still my all-time favorite all-purpose running shoe. Pre-race nutrition was, as always, a cup of coffee with cream. Post-race nutrition was unnecessary. Calves feel slightly worked post-race, but over all my legs feel great.

P.S. Updated the post with the rest of my times for the Weston 5K.