The unexpected 5K

I have never raced a 5K that I am aware of. Certainly not in this decade. The day before the 4th of July my wife mentioned her work was sponsoring a 5K walk / fun run. We decided that I would run the 5K, and she would walk with the boys. After I finished… I would run back to them and walk the rest with them. The route was on the Hillsboro 4th of July parade route.

I do not feel like I am in great shape right now. Many reasons. I just started a new job this week, so there was some chaos surrounding the transition, a few camping trips (that involved a lot of beer) and I am still adjusting to FIRST. BYW… I gained like 5 pounds in the first months on FIRST. I just don’t think the cross training burns enough calories so I have to adjust my eating habits a bit.

Anyway… so the 5K. I felt I could run one mile in 6:45, one at 7, and one at 7:15. That was my goal at least. FIRST is actually based on your 5K time, and since I haven’t ran any 5K, I just did my best to guess at what it would be. I guessed between 22:11 to 22:50. The reality was, 22:25. First mile was 6:45. Second was 7:15, and the last was 7:30. I think I went out too fast at first… as my watch was reading under 6 for the first ½ mile it seemed. Nuts. No way I could keep that up. The other thing to note is… there is no way I would have been able to hit that pace for even 5 seconds a month ago. That is a definite difference with FIRST.

I am a bit torn with weather FIRST is going to do me right. I thought about switching to a more conventional program, but I think it is too late… I am going to see this cycle through and see where it gets me. I think I will try to pick the cross training up a bit. But still, no matter how hard I push I just can’t burn the same amount of calories that way. I’d have to cross train for 3 hours to burn the same amount of calories as a 1 hour run I think.

I have a nice 17 mile run tomorrow. Yee-haw. It is hot now so I will have to get up pretty early.