You may remember this post from a few months ago where I briefly went through my “bonking” during a 5K time trial. Well, it’s been quite a bit longer than eight weeks (thanks holidays!), but I’m scheduled to run another 5K race this coming Saturday. I will certainly be drawing on that experience from September in order to run a smarter race. Thankfully, I’ve also built a better base of mileage, and I’ve put in some speed work. Which is why you see those old school Lunaracer 1s at the top of this post.
I broke those out last week because I’m planning to race in them and wanted to make sure they were ready for it. Despite their age (I’ve probably put less than 15 miles on them), they seem ready for the challenge. I don’t remember exactly when I purchased them, but it’s probably been at least 10 years ago and 99% of that time they’ve been in a box. To be sure, they are old school. No carbon plate, an upper that’s a bit rough around the edges and Lunarlon in the midsole. However, they’ll get the job done on Saturday. After that, I’ll determine whether I want to upgrade the footwear I’m using for speedier intervals as well as 5K and 10K races.
Work that Speed
Speaking of intervals, the most recent workout I ran was 6x600m with 200m active recovery between each rep (with a mile warmup and a mile cool down). I have to say, I felt great afterwards. Definitely worn out, but not overly so. In fact, I was running it at what I thought my 5K pace for Saturday should be, but probably could have dropped it down a few seconds. Certainly a good problem to have. I am looking forward to adding in more interval training after this race. I started out with mostly 8x400m (might be a bit too “track-focused” for big 5K improvements but I like them anyway), but threw in some ladders here and there. Running that 800-1000-1200-1000-800 with two minutes of active recovery between each rep definitely had me fondly remembering the 400m intervals I had been running. In just a few days I’ll see what all of this work has accomplished. My hope is that I’ll be able to run both smarter and harder.