I'd said after my February half-marathon that my plan was to take it easy on the running for the month of March and then spend April and May trying to get faster at the 5k. Well, trying to get faster in general but a 5k is a nice goal to structure my training around.
March was even lazier than I had intended. Winnipeg finally got a bit of snow right at the end of February so we decided to squeeze in as much skiing as possible while we still could. And through the rest of March, thanks to some melt/freeze cycles and how abyssmal our city is about pedestrian infrastrcuture, the sidewalks and trails were gross and icy, making running way less appealing.
But it's April now! And we're finally starting to melt and dry out!
Pride
My original plan was to just do a 5k time trial on my own, but a friend registered for a local Pride Race that happened to be exactly on the weekend I would have been doing my 'race' and asked if I wanted to sign up as well. If I am going to try to race hard, I may as well get a t-shirt and maybe a finisher medal out of it!
The Pride Race is a pretty fun event; I've either run it or volunteered as a course marshall most of the years they've been doing it. And very conveniently, the Start Line is just a few minute walk from home and near several good places to have brunch.
Technically this is a 6k race. I'll try to keep an eye on when I cross over the 5k mark :P
The plan
I'd thought perhaps I'd use my Garmin watch's coaching features to come up with a training plan, but it only seemed to offer 12 week or longer schedules. I need to dig into it more. In the meantime, I decided to try out an app called Runna, which I'd heard about from a Youtube review and purported to offer customized training plans tailored to your goal and level.
It's a subscription, but amounts to around $2/week after the trial period. Not too bad if I am going to be using it regularly. After this training block, I'll have to put more time into the Garmin stuff and see if I really need to be paying for Runna.
But in the meantime, it seems pretty slick! I entered the race details (date and distance) and the app asked for some info about my running: a typical running pace, my rough running level (you tell it if you are a new running, casual jogger, regularly run 10k, etc), my weekly volume, how many days per week I want to train, what day I want to do my long run on, and then it spat out an 8 week training plan!
The first week (I assume all the weeks will follow this structure) had an easy day, two speedwork sessions and a long run.
Week One Schedule
Monday 4.3 miles easy
Tuesday Tempo run: rolling 300s. A warmup followed by 7x 0.2mi @ 10:45/mi, 0.2 @ 12:05/mi, cooldown
Thursday Pyramid intervals: warmup, then 0.1 @ 9:25/mi, 0.25mi @ 9:45/mi, 0.5 @ 10:25/mi, 0.75 @ 10:45/mi, 0.5 @ 10:25/mi, 0.25 @ 9:45/mi, 0.1 @ 9:25/mi with walk breaks between each interval.
Saturday Long run: 1.2mi easy, 1.9mi @ 12:05/mi, 1.9 @ 11:25/mi, 1.2 @ 11:10/mi
This is just what I was looking for! The mix of different types of speedwork looks pretty fun. Left to my own I probably would have mostly stuck to, like, simple quarter mile intervals or something. Gotta admit, though, the Thursday interval session was pretty brutal: I had to take some extra walk breaks. But I could tell I was having an off day pretty much from the start of my warmup. If next week's intervals are also a struggle, though, I might adjust my goal time and then I think the app will change the intervals to be slower paces.
Oh one nice feature is that the Runna app will sync the workouts to my Garmin watch, mean all the timing for the intervals and the pace range I am supposed to maintain are programmed in and ready for me.
Runna has a bunch of coaching stuff and articles to read, which I haven't really looked at. I am pretty self-motivated when it comes to running. If I draw up a plan (or a watch creates it) I'll usually stick to it. Love to check off a completed workout! If I wasn't feeling movitvated to run, watching a video from a former Olympian telling me "You got this!!" wouldn't really get me jazzed up :P
It does also suggest optional strength training, which would definitely be good for me and which I'm probably not going to bother with...
The goal
Back when I was racing more regularly (I say, despite never being more than a slow hobbyist), I never raced many 5ks. The half-marathon has always been my favourite race distance. So, my 5k PB is pretty soft. 24 minutes plus change. I'm pretty sure I actually beat that during the race I set my half-marathon PB in :P
Of course.
That was 10 years ago when I was a lot younger, fitter, and lighter.
I'm not sure if a 50 year old Dana could get that fast ('fast') again. But I think cracking 30 minutes is a good goal for 8 weeks from now. I'm fairly sure right now if I pushed myself I could hit 32 minutes or so and if I can survive all this speedwork, knocking off 2 minutes from that is reasonable.
After that? Well I didn't hit my 2:30 goal for the Hypothermic Half so I'm leaning toward an October half-marathon to try again. That mean beginning that trianing block in the middle of July. Let's cross our fingers that Western Canada doesn't have another bad wildfire year!
