Posts Tagged ‘5k’

Trash Talk

The consensus view is that I should spend much of the next two weeks taunting Viper. This sentiment seems to include Viper himself, who claims it “feeds my fire” (so does methane, dude). He’s gone so far as to try to taunt me into taunting him by writing a weak-assed haiku about his unfortunate injury:

Run easy, in storm
Fast pace lifts rock of ages
Into shoe, heel torn

Let me fix that for you:

A rock in my shoe
Its edges tear at my heel
As well as my sole (soul).

Unfortunately, while I’m a middle-of-the-pack runner, I’m a back-of-the-pack trash talker. This goes back to the days of my youth – during the McKinley administration – when it was called “ranking out.” The exchange usually involved an insult by one kid, who would respond with “Your mother!” and follow-up with fisticuffs.

When I joined the Air Force, I discovered formalized trash talk. As a special ops navigator, one of my qualifications was computing how best to spread propaganda leaflets over enemy territory. Dropping heavily armed men or a BLU-82 on them is a better idea.

So before I taunt anyone, it would be advantageous to have something to back it up with. This morning I decided I needed a 5k baseline to tell me how far I still have to go. And the result was the standard good news/bad news.

The bad news is that it took 28:23 on the treadmill to cover the distance. The good news is that I deliberately ran the first mile in 11 minutes. Yeah, that was pretty weak, but it was either that or burn out early and run the last mile in 11 minutes – or worse. Anyway, that comes to an 8:16 pace for the last 2.1 miles.

Happy with my progress, but very far from taunting territory.

The Great Funny/Viper Challenge

OK, I think I’ve done something stupid.

No, no, I haven’t hurt myself again. I was roaming the blogs yesterday and I came across this post by Viper. He mentioned his training for the Tallmadge Memorial 5k (being held, strangely enough, on Memorial Day) and how he planned to best his PR of 23:28. He has been building mileage, but feels he is currently shy of what he needs to set a new mark. He was looking to motivate himself.

So, naturally, I got the brilliant idea of helping out both Viper and me. I also run a 5k on Memorial Day each year, appropriately called the No Excuses 5k. So I challenged him to a virtual race and he accepted.

My advantages: My 5k PR is exactly one minute faster than his, and I ran my last 5k in 23:08.

His advantages: Viper has run two consecutive 20-mile weeks and will increase. I’ve run about 12 miles in the last six weeks, total. His track sessions are already sub-8-minute miles. He’s also about 20 years younger than I am.

It’s entirely a friendly competition, I’m a good loser, and it’s only for bragging rights, but I am devoted to exercising my bragging rights when I win them.

Anyway, I went out for my first post-challenge run this morning. I arrange my return from injury the same way each time. There is a 1.75-mile loop around my neighborhood that I run every other day until I can do it in under 14 minutes (8:00 pace). Once I’m able to do that, I upgrade to a 2.4-mile loop until I can run that sub-19:15.

This morning I ran a 14:18 (8:10 pace), which is much better than I have any right to expect, but my stamina is AWFUL. If I had to run a 5k tomorrow, I’d be very lucky to go sub-27.

So I’ve got three whole weeks to chop about 3 1/2 to 4 minutes off my 5k time. HA HA HA HA! Now that’s funny.