Carlsbad 5k 10-week Program, Week 1

I started the 10-week 5k program from the (now defunct, unfortunately) Younger Legs blog this week. I'm looking to run the Teterboro 5k on July 17th. It's run on the airport runway so you can't get much flatter than that. Though it's the middle of July so even at 8:00 a.m. it's likely to be somewhat hot. I got started a week later than I had planned so I will likely have to cut out one of the weeks (already breaking the rules, oh well) as there doesn't seem to be a convenient 5k on the weekend of the 24th.

The plan has 2 workouts each week -- Tuesday and Friday -- with the rest of the days being your usual recovery/distance/long run stuff.

The first week's workouts were of the "dipping your toe in the water" variety. Tuesday was intervals: 8 x 2 minutes @ 5k pace with 3 minutes jog recovery. The interval workouts work up towards a total of 15 minutes @5k pace. But there's a catch: the first 2 minutes of each interval don't count towards that total, as it takes 2 minutes to get up to VO2 max effort. So this first week counted for zero minutes. The marsh trail where I would normally do this type of workout is still closed for repairs following the big wind storm in the spring so I did this on the treadmill. I used 6:15 pace as my 5k pace based on my 5:39 mile earlier this spring. The first interval felt really, really fast at this pace on the treadmill. The intervals got easier up to about number 6, then 7 was about the same as 6, and 8 was tougher, and then it was over.

The Friday workout was 6 x 30 seconds up a hill at around mile race pace with 2.5 minutes jog/walk recovery. Again the first one was the toughest and by the 5th and 6th they started getting tougher.

The main thing I noticed from both of this was that I was quite exhausted the following day. Wednesday I did a usual 50-minute or so recovery run. Similar on Thursday. Saturday I was planning my long run. I never got to it because of ferrying the kids around but that was probably a good thing as I was pretty exhausted. Felt much better Sunday morning. Looking forward to week 2.