A 40+ female runner's journey to the sub 50 minute 10K

[Mistral]

Ouch! This wasn’t at all what I had hoped for. It was not fun and I had to take more than 90 seconds rest between the last 3 intervals to muster the courage to get going again. Most of all I felt like quitting, so at least I got some mental training in there!

5x1K LHR AHR MHR
4:31 147 171 177
4:46 139 174 181
4:56 132 171 178
4:49 131 172 180
4:55 124 168 177

Lessons learnt:

1. The time of day matters. A lot. I honestly believe this is the main difference between the successful 3x2K session and the not-so-successful 5x1K. I know this from previous training sessions and my daily life too: My peaks and valleys are very high, very low, and ridiculously predictable.
   
2. The area where I ran isn’t working well for intervals – too windy, paved bits, too many other people about. I don’t think conditions really slowed me much, but they added to the frustration.
   
3. Running intervals by GPS has its challenges too. Garmin’s current pace indicator was all over the place at times, so I had no idea what pace I was running at. As a result, the first lap was much too fast, which may have contributed to ruining the session.
   

I’ll give some thought to how I can organize myself differently for these sessions, in particular how to fit them in at a time of day when I have more energy. And maybe I should consider finding a treadmill (no tracks available, unfortunately).

How should I approach this weekend’s 5K paced run? Choose a good time of day and give the sub 25 min a go? I promise not to be too demoralised if I don’t make it.