Post Kaiser updates

I know that over the last couple of years it hasn't been my habit to post frequent updates, mostly because I haven't been running all that much and didn't feel motivated to write about my lack of training. Things have been getting better lately so hopefully that will be motivation for more frequent updates, although I'm not promising anything. We'll see how things progress from here I suppose. In any case, the latest thing I have to show is a 16:38 5K, at the Zippy 5K about a week ago. I'll write a race recap in another post so this one is intended to fill the gap between the Kaiser half and this 5K.

The Kaiser half took quite a bit out of me and I was pretty sore for about a week after. I didn't run for a couple of weeks in an effort to recover and before I knew it I was falling into the same pattern as before. Sign up for a race, get motivated for a while then go back to mediocre training after the race. Throughout February and March I was only running 2-3 times a week so about 25-30 miles. Things got better over the last month though, to a big extend because I finally got a gym membership at a gym pretty much right across from work. Being able to go for a run in the middle of the day has helped out a lot since I hate running in the mornings and getting the run out of the way early in the day is the best way to avoid skipping it. This way I managed to get my mileage closer to 50M/week and while I still have ways to go before I'm as competitive as before at least I'm now seeing myself heading in that direction.

Besides the increase in mileage, I'm starting to put in some better workouts as well. I had some good fartleks and tempos but what got me pumped the most was the last track workout I ran before Zippy. I ran 4x1600 the week before the race, trying to get a sense of what I should be shooting for. I was shooting for 5:20s to begin with and started out with a 5:21, followed with a 5:20. I felt a lot better than I expected and picked things up on the 3rd, hitting a 5:11. I still felt that I had more in me and tried to shoot for a sub 5 on the last one. I started out on pace, coming through in 74 and 2:29 but lost some focus on the 3rd lap and came through in 3:47. I made a bid for it on the last lap but came just a little short, rounding up the workout with a 5:00. It would have been nice to see a 4 on the watch but I was still pretty happy with the workout. In general I'm happy with the way my fitness is progressing and I'm getting excited about pushing myself more and racing at a more competitive level. Hopefully my motivation levels will remain as high moving forward.