Better again - hard 5k - 18:31.9

Been working hard in the garden today (shifting bark), so came out with the idea of doing a sub 19 minute 5k. This was motivated by my good row yesterday, which was just inside my old target of beating 40 minutes for 10k! Another target in those days was 19 minutes for 5k. Very doable given that my PB for 5k is 17:49!

I spent some time on Roy Walter's excellent utilities page, and used the Paul's law predictor to come up with a 5k time. I know I can "comfortably" do a 2k sub 7, but thought that a 5k at that pace might be a bit stiff. But a 6:50 2k corresponds to a 1:49.1 5k so that was tempting. In the end, discretion (I had a headache all yesterday and woke this morning feeling a little ropey) was the better part of valour and I settled for a 1:49.9 first 1k, 1:52 until my heart hit 170, then 1:54, then "see".

I felt good. At 1k to go I had already decided to up the pace to 1:49.9 again then hit 1:45s for the last 500, and better for the last 200. Here is how it panned out.

#       Split  m EndHR
1 1:49.9 500 159
2 1:49.9 500 170
3 1:52.0 500 170
4 1:53.7 500 171
5 1:53.6 500 174
6 1:53.8 500 174
7 1:54.0 500 175
8 1:53.7 500 178
9 1:49.5 500 185
10 1:41.9 500 194
Totals 18:31.9 5,000 194

Pretty pleased with that. I felt strong at the end, despite the heart rate. I think that I could have gone 10-15 seconds faster.

Metres today: 5,891