5,000 Reasons to Keep Going

Hello and welcome to Tobias Talks.

It's been a great few weeks for me, I am progressing with my running training and ran 5k for the first time in years. The more I think about this the more I realise how huge it is. It's not a vast distance, I appreciate that, but it's the first time I have been able to do that in almost a decade. It's not the distance itself that I'm happy about, it's the consistent and dedicated effort I have put in to get to those results.

Today I ran possibly the slowest 5k I have ever done. I finished it just shy of 40 minutes. This run was another "Base" run and the time and pace was set by Garmin, I was tasked with running for 36 minutes at an average pace of 08:50/km, which is a dawdling pace and is frankly too slow for me to comfortably run. I knew that running for 36 minutes meant that I would be finishing at near to the 5k mark so that was a secondary goal I had set up.

I ended up running at an average pace of 7:52/km, and the full run from start to finish was 5.1km for a time of 40:10. I even ran in a little circle before the final straight just to be sure that I made it to the 5k mark. I ran at a very easy pace for the whole run, I still found it fairly difficult and it got tougher and tougher as the time passed, which was reflected in my HR, but I managed to keep the pace and even finished with a 80-100m sprint to the finish. Although sprint is probably a bit of an exaggeration but with my heavy legs I went as fast as I could!

The proudest part of all of this for me is that I didn't walk at all during the run, not a single time and that is the first time I have managed that since I restarted running a few weeks back. It felt so good to be a fully fledged runner again and I'm really hoping that I keep improving at this rate.

I have literally no idea what the next step will be for me, apart from continuing to follow the recommendations from my Garmin. After today's effort my Garmin only suggest a 24 hour recovery period, so it mean that I will be running again tomorrow. Although I have no idea what I'll be doing, but until I fail a workout I am going to keep doing what it says! So tonight it will be a lot of stretching and maybe a stroll around the park to help my legs recover in time for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading

Your friend, Tobias