Treadmill Tempo 5K!

It was time for another speed workout on Friday! Recently, I've done 3x1 mile on the treadmill in Feb, 2x2 mile outside in early March, and 3x1600 on the track in mid-March. That's been a lot of intervals, so it was time for a tempo run.

We got some freezing rain and then some snow on Tuesday night, and then it was COLD for Wednesday and Thursday, so that crap hadn't gone away. This is what our back yard looked like on Thursday evening:

Slushy footprints that had frozen.

So I knew Friday morning's tempo workout was going to be on the treadmill. Unfortunately.

I didn't look back to these workouts BEFORE my run, but I had to look back after the workout. I did 3 hard miles on the treadmill 1.5 years ago in 17:26 and then in 17:06. (THREE miles, not 5K.) Just over a year ago, I did a treadmill 5K in 17:24 noting "THAT WAS HARD. I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT AGAIN FOR A WHILE." I had a failed tempo 5K last year where I was moving FAST but only lasted 2.6 miles. And then I did a outdoor 5K "time trial" of sorts just under a year ago where I finished in 17:49.

Friday's workout was going to be a treadmill 5K. Just HARD. I didn't look at any splits of previous hard runs before hand - I was just going to work as hard as I could. I turned on the treadmill for 0.1 miles so it could get up to speed (ours is SLOW to get up to speed), and then I did my 5K from 0.1 to 3.2 miles.

I ran mile 1 at 10.5 mph and bumped it up to 10.6 near the end of that. My half mile splits were:

2:52 + 2:50 = 5:42

Not bad. But how much more did I have?

Here's something I NEARLY ALWAYS say after short races: I could have been a bit faster in the middle, but I was a bit scared of dying before the finish. That's what happened here. I bumped up the speed 0.1 mph a time or 2. My splits were:

2:50 + 2:48 = 5:38

I started mile 3 running around 10.9 mph and bumped it up to 11.0 around mile 2.5. Then I took it to 11.1 for the last 0.4 miles. My final splits were:

2:47 + 2:44 = 5:31

Plus 0:32 for the final 0.1 mile to hit 3.1 miles.

5K total: 17:24 (5:37/mile pace)

So that's exactly the time of my treadmill 5K just over a year ago where I noted that it was HARD. But this wasn't ALLLLL that bad. So I feel like it told me I kind of failed because I could have been faster, but at the same time it told me I'm in a bit better shape because it didn't KILL me.