As some of you will know, I have been taking part in a few Nike organised 5k races recently have been slowly trying to get my 5k time down as low as possible at the moment. I am feeling pretty fit at the moment so now is a good time to be hammering out the PB's for the running. Since the last 5k update, I have managed to get round the Regent's Park course in 17:40 which saw me take about 12 seconds of the previous PB. This is also the fastest that I have ever run 5k, inside or outside. My heart rate on this run averaged 182 and topped out at 191 on the finishing straight - I think that is a personal high on the heart rate. Still, the times are all moving in the right direction in preperation for the Nike 10k in October where I am going to try and do a sub 37min 10k.
Anyway, back to yesterday's run, based on my 5k times, I knew that I should be on track to beat my previous PB of 38:03. I would have also been massively dissapointed had I not gone under 38 on this occasion. The running calculator that I use had predicted me a 36:50 time based on my 5k time which I did think was a bit optimistic. At least it did give me some km splits to try and achieve though.
One of the biggest problems that most people suffer from in running races is the inabilty to pace themselves from the off. I have recently tried to stop going off too fast but low and behold, on the day I hit the first km in about 3:15 which was about 25s too fast. The second one came in at about 3:22 but I felt comfortable so just tried to hang on to that pace as much as possible. By the fifth though I had slipped back to about 3:45's so the steady state running was out the window. Still, I figured I only really needed to keep up a similar pace and I should be able to go a bit under 38. When I got to 8k though I realised it was gonna be close so I had to up the pace a bit - I had also just seen a South African chap from my club behind me. We had been chatting at the start and it was clear we going for a similar time - I had to stay ahead of him anyway so I upped the speed and just thought I would have to endure the pain now until the finish.
Anyway, finally came home in 37:30 (officially recorded as 37:33) which is 43 seconds quicker than the previous PB.
The Serpies website which records a lot of our runs makes use of a Age Graded Tables to calculate a percentage score for all of our runs. The aim of these tables is to create a level playing field between the sexes and the across the age spectrum as all of these factors are used to calculate the percentages. I had previously just about broken through the 70% mark but have now managed to almost hit 72%. As you can see from the pic below, things have come on a bit from when I started doing running races less than a year ago. The table unfortunately does not include the new Nike 5k times though as they are not "official" races.
4 comments:
Looking good for Queensland 2009 then Rich. Keep it up mate.
I'm still not sure what the percentage actually means though. What does the 72% mean (in non-triathlete, not-very-clever, Jonny kind of way please)? Thanks.
The Age Graded Result is basically just a figure which, to calculate, takes into account an athelete's age. This means that if I was 60 and doing a 40minute 10k, that is a lot better than doing the same thing when I am 28. Therefore, the 60 year old would get a much higher percentage score than me. I found this link which explains it a bit better than I do.
Well done mate, always good to break a PB. I look forward to cheering you on at the Bristol half marathon on Sunday. Trouble is that after you whiz past, I'll probably then have to wait around for half of my footy team, and then wait even longer for Chew!
I can feel two blogs in the making here....get the camera at the ready Andy (that's if you really are going to bother standing on the pavement and watching).
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