Brent Kearney

In preparation for my first race, I started paying attention to how much time it takes to run, and how much distance I cover when I run. I’ve been running for awhile, but never competitively, so these things didn’t matter before. I signed up for the shorter 5km race next month, because I thought it would be easier to run a shorter distance for my first race. Well I discovered that I typically run farther than that! The trail to get to the trail where I normally consider the starting point for my run, was 3km long. So what I normally considered my warm-up stretch is actually more than half the distance of the race that I’m training for. Perhaps I should switch to the 10km “eduro” run…

Perhaps not though — the numbers are a cruel coach. The best time last year for the 5km race was just under 23 minutes. I measured my run today, and it took me over 28 minutes to get to 5km, with a 335m elevation gain and loss. I’m optimistic that this can improve a lot though, because the first 10 minutes I was in warm-up mode, where I typically start at about 1/3 normal speed, and gradually increase the pace until I feel warmed up enough to push it harder. Next time, I’ll start the clock after the warm-up phase. Can I bring my time down by 5 whole minutes though?

My resting heart rate today is 60bpm.