When a friend of mine who doesn't even run very often told me that he was going to accomplish a sub 20 minute 5km run I at first laughed.
But what I know about this guy is that when he sets his mind to something physical, he normally accomplishes it even though it might sound crazy to others.
For me, a sub 20-minute 5k run is impossible. I am too heavy from many years of weightlifting including intentionally going through bulking phases to ever be able to do that. My goal is sub 30-minute 5ks and even that is something that is really pushing me to the limit.
When I saw his Strava results this morning I was at first happy for him, but then he later responded to tell me the bad news.
This is still an outstanding run and at first glance it looks like he managed it but when he responded to me later he revealed that he started out too fast and suffered the consequences later.
Now for me I can't imagine being able to do any of these times even the "slower" ones at the end. All of them are much faster than my PB's of around just under 6 minutes per km. But if you look closely you can see that he really overdid it in the first 2 kms.
The idea here was to do just under 4 minutes per km but he was a full 20 seconds under that after the first km and while that might seem impressive on the surface, it is probably what killed him in the end. I know that I have fallen victim to this because in my first km I don't really know how fast I am going and when the first km goes by and my watch says something like 5 minutes 45 per km pace I am surprised and then think to myself "well, this isn't really hurting me so let's keep it up!"
This is a mistake. It was for him as well.
Later on his body simply wouldn't go any faster than the 4 minutes and 13 seconds in km number 4 and while he did dig deep and went 1 second faster in km number 5, he managed to miss his target by a mere 1.1 seconds.
His app of some sort game him this explanation at the end of it and man, he was gutted.
The thing is, a lot of people that don't run don't understand how difficult it can be to get a full second off of a pace. It seems like a short amount of time when you are sitting in a chair looking at a clock but when you are pushing your body to the limit, it's a very long time indeed.
I am not as competitive as this guy is. I am 10 years older than he is and he is already slim on a level that I could only accomplish if I came down with some sort of terminal illness.
He said he is going to try again sometime soon and I suggested that he do so at an actual running track. This was done on a mix of the street and on the park trails. It was really early in the morning but it is very conceivable that there were people or cars that briefly got in his way and that could have contributed to his slight, very slight, lapse in pace.
I will never go this fast.. Most of us never will. But to be that close to the goal and fail is a tough loss to take!
He's in a different fitness world than I am though. You may notice that he doesn't even have the calorie burn calculated because that doesn't matter to him at all!
