About that running time trial

I had to dig, but I found them!

First, a confession: I've never actually raced an open 5K or 10K.

I've done a few fun runs here and there, and of course I've done them at the end of a triathlon, but that's it. Same for a half-marathon: I've done 13, if you count six marathons and the last leg of a 70.3, but I've never run one by itself.

As my mind wandered on the treadmill yesterday, I thought about my next scheduled monthly 1000-meter time trial in the pool. And then I thought, "I should be doing 5K and 10K running time trials, too."

And then I thought, "... What the heck are my PRs?"

I had to go digging, but looking at all the sprint tris that ended in a 5K, my best time is 25:04; of my two Olympic tris, my faster 10K was my first, 52:03. Both are respectable times, but that :0X for both kills me. I'd love to run a 24:59 5K or even go for a 7:59 pace. Maybe someday I could go for a sub-50 10K.

But first, alas, I have a LOT of speed work to do. A quick look at my Daily Mile logs show that I've only had three sub-9-minute paced runs in the past YEAR. Taking a full minute off each mile is going to hurt. And/or take a lot of work. And/or take a lot of time.

Can I do it? We'll see. But now I have something to work toward. And hopefully after I do those time trials, I'll have an idea of how much work it will take to get me there.