20:04 5k

Best 5k time in years but still somewhat disappointing. For some reason I thought I would be closer to 19 minutes. Didn't really feel that good. Probably didn't warm up enough... or spent too much time standing around after warming up. And it didn't help that the course was pretty tough... quite a bit of up and down for a suburban road 5k.

Looking Back 18 Months

About 18 months ago I went out for a tempo run on the marsh trail near work. After the 1.25 mile warm-up jog a did 2.5 miles at just above 8-minute per mile pace for a 20-minute tempo run. I probably averaged around 8:02 per mile or something and it was most definitely too fast for a tempo run -- I was gassed at the end and had to walk and then sit down for a bit before jogging back to the gym.

Today I went out for a run on the marsh trail. After a brief half-mile jog to the trail -- we have a new gym in the neighborhood and it's a bit closer to the trail head -- a did 2 full 1.5-mile loops of the trail and the half mile back to the gym for 3.5 miles total all around 7:14 per mile pace. And it was an MP (marathon pace) run -- not a tempo -- with HR averaging just about 157, and a fairly easy one at that.

I think that qualifies as progress.