5k parkrun – well off my PB…why?

Today wasn’t one of my most glorious performances. I managed a sneaky PB in around October last year. I’ve been training reasonably well since then. Certainly enough to have improved.

Yet today I knew that I had only managed a long run 6 days previously. And before that I’d been focusing on building up my mileage base. Plenty of scope for another PB then?

Well.

I had been in the pool and doing some fairly hard (long) turbo HR and cadence sessions including test sessions to set myself up for the coming training onslaught from Feb onwards

So some cause for concern there as the last of these was on Thursday night enabling me to only have just over 1 day to recover from the bike.

So I set my sights, I thought sensibly, at 60 seconds below PB hoping to be 45 below. The conditions were a bit muddy but no wind so not too bad. My motivation wasn’t too bad and I felt relatively OK at the start. Sensibly I left the PB shoes at home!

In the end I was 90 seconds off.

This sort of performance is disturbing as, although it can be explained, it does not inspire confidence that I have actually improved since my last PB. (There are reasons why that might not be the case). So come a 12 week sprint  tri-training plan with no 5k races in it then what speed should I be aiming to run in the actual race? When do I practice race speed? Sure I can take a 3-5 day break from training to taper to another parkrun but what if the conditions on the day are not too good and what about taking that much time out of a plan. Gets tricky you see!

Anyway, I had the same thing last August/September and did OK. So I remain reasonably confident and hopeful for the next big one!

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