17:56 was my second-fastest 5K. It was also the middle 18 minutes of a one-hour run.
I had asked Lesley how to handle that. Warm up for 15 minutes, race for less than 18, then cool down for 30 minutes to get the hour? Exactly, she said. Add ten 30-second pickups to the warmup and get progressively faster.
This was not a week built around being fresh for a 5K.
Saturday had been 18.5 miles of running. Sunday was a five-hour bike ride because I guided a group of newer riders to Bear Mountain and then Cold Spring. The session ended with long efforts on the bike. I was supposed to do three sets of 15 minutes but cut it to two when I started fading.
The problem was not mysterious. I had managed my nutrition badly.
When Lesley told me roughly how much I should be eating and drinking each hour, my response was: “That is at least DOUBLE what I take in. No wonder I feel gassed.”
No one had ever given me the nutrition basics for a day that long. I knew how to work. I knew how to keep going. Apparently I did not know how to put enough fuel into the person doing the work.
Monday was a rest day. Wednesday night I did the warmup, the pickups, and a GU, then got onto the line in Prospect Park.
It was warm but generally nice for a summer race in New York. The heavy gears from the bike were still in my legs. They did not make me feel weak. They just pulled out some of the crispness.
The first mile included a long hill. I ran 5:48 and it felt mild to moderate, which was unusual. Normally that split took a lot more work. The hill training was doing something. My legs felt stronger and more responsive when I pressed.
The last mile was different. I could not channel the closing aggression I usually had in a top race. I was solid, but I was cruising hard rather than actually racing somebody.
The result came back at 17:56. I called it 17:55 in the excited email I sent the next morning. Either way, it was under 18 and the second-fastest 5K I had run.
A few weeks earlier I had run 17:45 on the same course. For that one I was tapered, wearing race flats, and had good competition in the last mile. This time I had come straight out of a big weekend and still thought a proper taper could have produced a personal best.
I was happy. More importantly, the plan felt like it was working.
Then I sent Lesley a map of the next problem.
Getting to the good riding from my apartment was a workout before the workout. The first 15 miles took about an hour and 15 minutes. I had drawn a box over that part of the map and labeled it “garbage miles.” If the actual intervals took another two hours, a prescribed three-hour ride became four and a half or five by the time I got home.
I wanted to ride north because it was fun. I also did not want to turn every bike session into an accidental epic. We decided the subway could carry me through the junk miles.
Two days later I did the three-hour ride on a 3.3-mile loop in the park near my apartment instead. It was more boring than riding upstate, but the intervals kept me too busy to think much about the scenery. The next day it rained, so I combined the run into one long session: 40-minute warmup, 30-minute tempo, then about 85 minutes easy with the club.
I could feel Saturday's bike ride in my legs.
That was fine. The 5K had been fast enough to show what was there. The tired legs, food mistake, subway question, and park loops were the actual training.