Another 5K Race Done

Another 5K race is behind me as of Saturday and I think I did Ok. I predicted a 22 minute time and I finished it in 22:53. This gave me a second place finish in my age group of 55 to 59, there are some fast runners out there in the same age group that would have pushed me out if they had showed for the race. This race was the Dreher Park morning run of their two part series.

The second race will be August 17 I believe and will be run in the afternoon. I must say it was hot and humid and many people may have run faster if it was cold or at least cooler.

As long as my times steadily drop as my training progresses I’ll be happy. My goal is to eventually get down to the 19 minute range for the 5K. That I hope will happen by this time next year, but who knows what may happen between now and then. In reality it may take longer and I hope I can stay injury free.

As far as my training has been going for the marathon, I have been missing out on the long runs during the weekends due to my work schedule. The work issue has to do with my part time job at Home Depot. They keep scheduling me too early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to run early and I can only fit in a shorter run in the afternoon because I also have other chores to take care of.

But, I have finally worked that out, during September, October and November they will not schedule me until after 11:00 AM so I should have time to get in those increasingly long runs.

On the issue of long runs, I really need to work on my base by increasing my mileage running at a slower pace to build up my aerobic capacity. I have been using Wednesday as my speed day doing mile or ¼ mile repeats hoping to get faster for the 5K but I think it may be too soon to run those. But I think I will keep it up for another couple weeks until the next 5K then back off.

I have an old Heart Rate Monitor I got back in the later 1980’ that I have been using again. I put new batteries in the thing and its working just great. This will help me keep my pace down so I can keep in the fat burning mode while doing my slower or longer runs. I posted the video from the finish line of the Dreher Park race where you can see all the finishers crossing the finish line.