Not going to count it properly but just be nice to know I’ll be equal to around my fittest sort of times if that makes sense. And to give me something to try and motivate myself.
I’ll have a look through my strava log soon, but I very much went liken a bat out of hell and hung on in there. Over 5km, when you’re often pushing for seconds, you find you don’t have enough distance to make the time up by starting slow.
I know one of my sub 20s was something like 5:45 1st mile, 6:20 2nd mile and 6:50 3rd mile and a bit for the .1 of a mile.
I remember that one as I started slightly downhill, clocked my fastest mile during a run and it was a 5km race hahah.
On a less common day they might be more consistent splits, but I tend to be more consistent and find a range of about 22/23 minutes when I strive for consistent mins per miles.
Been a weird year with an irregular heartbeat coming to light, this time last year I ran a 19:04 5km, a 1:32 half marathon and a 41:10 10km. Aside from this last month or so (when I managed a 20:50 parkrun before lockdown), I’ve found myself a lot happier not worrying about any times getting back to fitness, and that it came down quite quick and naturally.
You’ll get there I’m sure, but don’t neglect speed sessions as your body needs to develop a higher lactic threshold to be able to not feel tired further along the 5km. Slowly but surely you feel that ‘slowing’ down moving further along your route until you crack it, then once the barrier falls (took me 6 months of training haha!) the psychological weight was lifted and it became a norm, with PBs of seconds every while.
Good luck.
