Reflections

So ultimately that phase of training was a little disappointing. I train to race and none of my races in this phase were much more than satisfactory. Having had time to reflect and talk to Tim about everything hopefully I can take lessons learned into the next training block.

This was the first time I had followed a '5k specific' training program. We could have gone with my typical training plan of longer intervals and tempos which has gotten me fit in the past but experimented this time with a lot of shorter, harder, faster workouts. I was able to meet most of the goals of these workouts and in fact absolutely nailed most of them, but possibly at a price as I felt pretty tired most of the time. In races I found myself not being able to hold a strong pace throughout. Friday night encapsulated that. I went through 2 miles in 10:17 but when I tried to put the foot on the gas during the third mile there was nothing there. That lack of 'power' is something Tim has assured me we will work on next time!

No regrets though, you don't learn anything unless you try it. For now it's time to kick back a bit and enjoy the next few weeks of unstructured training. I'm going to jump into a few track races at the Tuesday track nights and do some of the CRC workouts but other than that I'll be pretty much deciding what I'm going to do each day when I wake up!