Those that are regular readers of the blog will know that I have done a few of these 'Podium' races now and that I am a big fan of the format that they have put together there. Last March I ran my first Podium 5k, recording a time of 15:24, which at the time was my fastest ever, so this provided a good opportunity to see my improvement compared to this time a year ago.
This latest one was the best one yet, with a very strong field making for a fast pace and ensuring there was plenty of other runners to pull you around the field.
I had gone into the race relatively relaxed about what to expect from the race, in terms of time, and rather unsure what level of performance I would be at. This is because I was concious of the fact that, although I have been very happy with how my training has been going since the turn of the year, I haven't done much racing on the road.
With that in mind, I set out with the mindset that regardless of the result I recorded, at least this would set me my starting point and benchmark for the year over the 5k distance.
And what a benchmark it is, having been fortunate to have found myself in and amongst a brilliant 4 strong pack for much of the race. I managed to record a new personal best of 15:07, knocking 7 seconds off my previous best, which was set at Lancaster back in September of last year.
The fact that I have set a new best time so early in the season, and in my first race over that distance in almost 6 months, has given me a huge amount of confidence that I should now be targetting hitting sub 15 by the end of the summer season.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the time is now actually Wesham's record fastest time for 5k, which is amazing to think that the club is older than me!
Following on from my 80th place finish at the National crosscountry last week being the club's best ever finish at that particular event, it has been an unbelievable two weeks for me on a personal note within the club. Anyone who knows me, will know how proud I am to be representing my home town club, and to be able to be setting new standards of performance for it gives me an immense sense of achievement and pride.
I am determined that I will not become complacent though, and have many, many more targets that I am still striving towards, and have a hell of a long way to go before I can claim that I am near fulfilling some of them. For now, I am just taking it one step at a time, and am just happy to see my development continuing gradually.
With regards to this particular performance, much is owed to the group that I found myself in and around during the race. I was able to run the course with Chris Livesey and Andy Benson (both of Preston Harriers), this was good for me as I know them both from training on the track as part of Helen Clitheroe's training group. It helped to make me feel comfortable despite the pace that we were going at.
The training that I am doing as part of that Tuesday group is definitely benefitting my top end speed, and hopefully I will continue to improve running and training alongside these faster runners. It was just a shame that I wasn't able to stick with those guys in the last 200 metres when they turned up the speed into the sprint finish. In the end I finished the race in 9th place.
However, I can't grumble with a big pb, especially after another big week of training. On Thursday I had ran a 10k tempo session around the docks in exactly 33:30. In an ideal world perhaps I wouldn't have done quite so much 48 hours before a race, however my main target that I am working towards is Cardiff Half and it has been for some time. So the most important thing of all this week was maintaining my training targets ahead of that one, which is now less than 3 weeks away.
I finished off my week with a 19 mile long run, my longest in quite a while, at a steady pace, giving me 80+ miles for the week for the third week on the bounce.
Total mileage for the week: 81
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:29
Total mileage for February: 315
Total mileage for month so far (March): 64
Total mileage so far 2016: 694
Average miles per day 2016: 10.51
