The first two years I ran Cross-Country in high school I really had no idea what I was doing. I ran a lot after school and then ran as fast as I could in races. Sometimes I finished without feeling very tired and sometimes I was out of gas at the two mile mark. I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't very good either.

I got a whole lot better the last two years of high school and then dramatically better still after my senior season ended. What changed? I simply started tracking, analyzing, and improving my running stats like distance, time, pace, and weight. Like Peter Drucker said of business processes, "If you can measure it, you can improve it", and that's exactly what I did with my running.

So with that in mind, I'm looking at my recent stats and trying to come up with a plan for the Race for the Cure 5K on Saturday. I realize this plan may go out the window since I was just sick and unable to run for over a week, but I felt pretty good on an easy run yesterday, so you never know.

My goal of 7:30 pace works out to a 23:15 5K time. (I'm still embarrassed that that's a stretch goal for me, but hey, I haven't run competitively for nine years.) About a month ago, I ran a 22:46 5K by myself, so I at least know it's possible.

Five kilometers works out to 3.1 miles and that extra tenth of a mile always seems to ruin everything. You approach the three mile mark feeling pretty good about your time, you can see the finish line, you're almost there, and then, boom, you're caught in a tenth of a mile time warp that adds 45 seconds to the clock. It's too hard to do mental math during a run to account for that extra tenth, so I like to work backward and set my individual split goals in advance.

I don't want to depend on running any faster than eight minute mile pace over the last 1.1 miles, so my two mile split simply cannot exceed 14:27. If it does, I'm in for a world of hurt for 1.1 miles that probably still won't result in me reaching my goal. Without doing any speed work lately, I can't imagine I'll be able to run much better than a 7:00 first mile, so my second mile has to be 7:27 or better.

There you have my planning process. I can't say I feel very confident about being able to hit those splits after being sick for a week, but they are what they are if I'm going to reach my goal. 7:00, 14:27 (7:27 pace), and 23:15 (8:00 pace) are the only numbers I need to remember. Maybe it'll happen this race, maybe next race, but either way I know exactly what I need to do.

Posted by JoshC at June 7, 2007 6:29 PM

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