My Best 5k Ever

I was able to run my favorite 5k ever just a couple weeks ago. What made it so good? I was able to run it with my 9 year old son that's what. He had run his first 5k a few weeks prior. He started out with my wife but after finding her pace too slow he took off by himself and walking only once finished just under 31 minutes. Not bad! This time he wanted to go faster and enlisted me to help pace him. This time he didn't walk at all and was working really hard toward the end. I was impressed by him. It was a big (5,000 runners) but casual (no times, not sure of the starting line) race and we were weaving through a lot of runners. We ended up finishing in 28:26. Great job Cole!

Today's workout put me at the local middle school track, an easy 1.75 mile warm up from our house. I was a little worried about my ability to do a good workout since my legs were sore and tired all day yesterday. Fortunately when I woke up this morning I was feeling pretty fresh. I entered a 16 x .25 mile workout with 100 meter rests into the Garmin and got started. My goal was to complete them all in 90-95 seconds and after 2-3 intervals I was able to dial in on my pace. I slowed a little bit in my 7th-10th intervals but number 12 was my fastest one. I cruised through a couple more and then definitely felt the fatigue set in on number 15. Luckily I had only one left and was able to bring it home. I had started out jogging the 100 meter rests but found that didn't give me sufficient recovery to let my heart rate reduce so I ended up walking them (also I was tired). I wasn't so excited about the 1.75 miles to get back home but at least it was slow. Of course I usually try to refuel within 30 minutes of my workouts because we all know that is prime time for your muscles to absorb their required nutrients but that just had to wait as I dived into my kids' pool to cool down. Plus playing with them in the pool is kind of a workout in itself.